2023 ROMANIAN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Wednesday, April 5th – Sunday, April 9th
- Otopeni, Romania
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Site
- Start List
The 2023 Romanian National Championships kick off on Wednesday, April 5th which means 18-year-old prodigy David Popivici will dive into the Otopeni waters.
World Record holder Popovici is set to take on a packed schedule of six individual events including the 50m free, 100m free, 400m free, 100m back, 50m fly and 100m fly.
Popovici is opting out of the 200m free, the event in which he took gold at the 2022 World Championships. There in Budapest, we saw the teen crush a time of 1:43.21 to notch a new national and World Junior Record, outperforming his nemesis Hwang Sunwoo of South Korea who settled for silver in a still-speedy 1:44.47 national record of his own.
Even sans the 2free, we’ll see Popovici contest the 1free here in his native Romania where he owns the fastest time in history with his 46.86 World Record logged at the 2022 European Championships.
Popovici’s lifetime bests in each of his entered events reside as follows:
- 50m free – 22.16, July 2022
- 100m free – 46.86 WR, August 2022
- 400m free – 3:47.99, August 2022
- 100m back – 57.06, June 2019
- 50m fly – 24.38, December 2020
- 100m fly – 58.18, Febuary 2019
Why not swim the 200 and take another crack at Biedermann?
He’s not tapered.
RO Nationals, day 2, heats
David Popovici – new national record, 50m fly, 23.96
Can’t wait for the final!
Results for day 1 finals here: https://frnpm.ro/fisiere/documente/5/530.pdf
He and Hwang seem to be in perfect harmony.Last year, Hwang added butterfly to the freestyle, and Popovici said at about that time that he would ads butterfly.Now Popovici will take part in the backstroke race this year, so I wonder if Hwang will take part in the backstroke this year.The harmony between them is very interesting .But Hwang’s back and breast seems not good in his 200IM.
I don’t see that coming this year. Hwang sticks to 100/200FR and 4×200 FR relay till Paris. He only entered his two FR events at the selection trials recently and needs to get gold medals at the Asian Games for military exemption.
Seems inevitable that his 57bk and 58fly PB’s are going to get destroyed here.
54 mid and 52 low incoming
Good guess on the 54 back! He looked good this morning!
Didn’t he swam a 52 or 53 100m butterfly last year ?
No idea what his back and free will be like, but I’m curious
I’ll play it pretty safe and say 53 for the fly and 54 high for the back
I wrote 52 low fly and 54 mid back but I assume he’s not shaved or tapered so you’re probably right
Seriously, how much is shaving going to do for him?
this doesn’t mean anything but I just noticed bc I follow him on IG and I think it’s kinda cute that Popovici rarely likes Swimming Stats’ posts but has liked 4/5 of the posts for McIntosh’s trials swims. Solidarity among junior swimmers breaking highly regarded freestyle world records :^)
Skinny legends gotta stick together!
Young guns demolishing the Oldies