7TH FINA WORLD JUNIOR SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019
- 50-Meter Course
- Duna Arena, Budapest (Hungary)
- Pool swimming: Tuesday, August 20 – Sunday, August 25, 2019
- Heats 9:30am GMT+2 (3:30 am EDT / 12:30 am PDT)/ Semifinals and Finals 5:30pm GMT+2 (11:30am EDT / 8:30am PDT)
- Meet site
- Entries book
- FinaTV Live Stream (subscription required)
- Live results
16-year-old Gretchen Walsh dipped under the 54-second threshold in the women’s freestyle for the first time in her young career en route to World Junior Championships gold.
After hitting a semi-final time of 54.25 last night to establish herself as the top swimmer in Budapest, the American fired off a monster new personal best mark of 53.74 to take the gold in the only sub-54 second outing of the entire field.
Walsh’s previous personal best entering this competition was the 54.13 she clocked at this summer’s U.S. Nationals. Flash forward to tonight’s swim, however, and the Nashville Aquatics Club star crushed that to pieces, winning the 100m free here in Budapest by .80. The next closest competitor was USA teammate Torri Huske who put up a super solid time of 54.54, just .02 off her own lifetime best. Australia’s Meg Harris touched in 54.58 for bronze.
Here is a comparison of Walsh’s 54.13 previous PB against her wicked-fast 53.74 from tonight:
25.83/28.30 = 54.13
25.57/28.17 = 53.74
With her swim, Walsh inches closer to Olympic icon Missy Franklin‘s National Age Record of 53.63 set back at the 2011 U.S. Nationals, now sitting just .11 away. But, Walsh did overtake Olympic champion in this event, Simone Manuel‘s PB from this age group of 53.86 that was ranked #2 behind Franklin.
11 more months till trials, could the women have 4 under 53 in the same race????
Is anyone familiar with her training or her stroke technique? Her stroke strikes me as pretty raw. I saw some underwater video of her in the 100 at Nationals and she was dropping her right elbow on her catch pretty noticeably.
Looks like her race as a whole could be cleaned up a lot. My intuition tells me that touching up her stroke/race strategy and putting on a little muscle could possibly yield a 52-low a couple years down the line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caFDlrGdP1A
HOT FIRE 🌶
0.11 seconds difference at that speed is almost a foot difference in distance.
You can say that Manuel was inches closer to the world record. It will be also a correct statement.
Alternatively, she’s within 8 inches now whereas before this meet she was nearly three feet behind.
At least 10. Swimmers are faster than 2m/sec at very finish. But you are right if it is less than foot we are measuring by inches.
Nope
Fantastic swim by Gretchen and awesome to see NAC producing swimming greats again!
A pure talent, destined to great things
It may be the most difficult thing to predict future swimming career of 16 years old talent.
Missy Franklin: 16yo – 53.6 and then only 53.3
Penny Oleksiak:16 yo – 52.7 and never under 53 since then
Sarah Sjostrom: 16 yo – 54.0 and then 51.7
The vote downs seem to pile up.
Penny Oleksiak went 52.9 in the finals at World Champs in Budapest but no, hasn’t been close to that individually since. Although, with a 52.00 relay split, it can only lead us to wonder what she could have done had she not scratched the 100 free individually last month…!
Somewhere up in Charlottesville I can picture Coach DeSorbo already wearing a huge grin on his face! Chances are he could end up boasting the no. 1 women’s recruiting class of 2021 to complement no. 1 for 2019 & 2020! Go Hoos!
If he’s grinning ear to ear, that’s a serious grin.
Amazing that the #2 finisher was Torri Huske, the top Virginia girl in the class of ‘21. DeSorbo is grinning indeed.
Yes, predicting is difficult and perhaps unwise, yet I’ll take my chances
Awesome! When is she 17?
January 2020