10 Swimmers to Watch, All the links you need for the 2015 Junior World Championships

2015 World Junior Swimming Championships

• Tuesday, August 25th – Sunday, August 30th, 2015
• OCBC Aquatic Centre, Singapore Sports Hub
• Prelims: 10AM / Finals: 6PM
• Psych Sheets
• Meet website
• ‘Live Stream’ – EuroVision
• Live Results

The FINA World Junior Swimming Championships are set to bring together some of the best young swimmers in the world in Singapore next week, with Junior World titles and Junior World records on the line.

The event is only for boys ages 15-18 and girls ages 14-17, but uses FINA’s format for determining competition ages, which means all athletes must be in that age bracket on December 31st of 2015. (So an athlete who turns 19 this fall is not eligible to compete in Singapore, despite being technically of age during the meet.)

The upshot of that system is that any male athlete born between 1997 and 2000 will be eligible, as will any female athlete born between 1998 and 2001.

Below, we’ve got everything you need to get prepped for all the action, including the event schedule, start times around the world and several key swimmers to watch.

Event Schedule

You can view the full event schedule in PDF form here.

The World Junior Championships will feature heats, semifinals and finals for all events 100 meters and below. Events 200 meters and up will be swum with only prelims and finals, and the 800 and 1500 frees will be only timed finals. Below is the full morning and evening event order, with medal races shown in bold.

Start times around the world

10 Swimmers to Watch

In terms of top junior talent, this meet is loaded. Just a cursory glance at the psych sheets show upwards of 20 events with very realistic chances of a falling Junior World Record. With that many records on the line, we could spend many paragraphs highlighting all the potential medal contenders. Therefore, the following list is far from exhaustive. We’ve featured 10 different swimmers with some added intrigue heading into the meet.

1. Kyle Chalmers, Australia: Long touted as the next great Aussie sprint star, athletic 17-year-old Kyle Chalmers will get a chance to really show his stuff internationally next week, as perhaps the favorite in the 50 and 100 frees. Chalmers is an interesting prospect. Alhough he’s a world-class swimmer, he also still competes in Australian rules football, though his participation there nearly took him out of Worlds and Junior Worlds due to an injury.

2. Rikako Ikee, Japan: Born in 2000, Rikako Ikee became Japan’s first middle-schooler to qualify for Worlds at age 14 earlier this year. Ikee is the top seed in both the 50 and 100 fly, and could also be in the hunt for gold in the 50 and 100 frees. One of the youngest swimmers in the whole meet, Ikee is among the best pure sprinters at Junior Worlds, a unique combination in a set of events that put a premium on size and strength.

3. Michael Andrew, USA: 16-year-old American Michael Andrew will have one of the busiest schedules in Singapore. The versatile NAG record-breaker will compete in a whopping 8 individual events – the 50s of all four strokes, the 100 fly, back and breast, and the 200 IM. Andrew has legitimate shots at Junior World records in the 100 breast, 50 back and 50 free, and outside chances in several more of his races, but the result will probably come down to how Andrew can handle a grueling schedule of prelims, semifinals and finals that could add up to 24 swims plus relays.

4. Arina Openysheva, Russia: Russian 16-year-old Arina Openysheva is coming off her own busy meet lineup at the European Games earlier this summer, a meet in which she won 7 individual medals. She’s taking a more focused event lineup in Singapore, where she’s in the hunt for gold in the 100, 200 and 400 frees. Russia has been notoriously good in junior competitions over the past few years, and Openysheva is a key piece to extending that dominance to Junior Worlds.

5. Brandonn Almeida, Brazil: One of the best distance men in Singapore this week, Brazil’s Brandonn Almeida will look to extend a big summer with three races at Junior Worlds: the 400 IM, 800 free and 1500 free. That 400 IM Junior World Record should be on high alert, though Almeida would have to make some big drops to catch Australian Mack Horton‘s marks in the freestyle events.

6. Sierra Schmidt, USA: The female counterpart to Almeida is American Sierra Schmidt, who is the top seed in the 800 and 1500 frees. Famous for her animated pre-race ritual of dancing to music blaring in her headphones, Schmidt is sure to be an entertaining force in Singapore. Watch for a 400 free that will pit her against Openysheva (at the high end of her range) and Australian Tamsin Cook.

7. Luke Greenbank, Great Britain: The Junior World Record-holder in the 200 back, Luke Greenbank was another star of the European Games. The British 17-year-old will swim all three backstrokes. He’s the heavy favorite in the 200, will have to fight off Andrew and Germany’s Mark Ulrich in the 100 but would need a big improvement in the 50 to contend for a backstroke sweep.

8. Viktoria Zeynep Gunes, Turkey: 17-year-old Viktoria Zeynep Gunes is in line for a busy week that could include a breaststroke sweep. The Junior World Record-holder in the 200 IM, Gunes will swim 5 different events in Singapore, including that race, where she’ll look to better her own world mark. Gunes is among the top seeds in the 50, 100 and 200 breaststrokes, and will also swim the 100 fly.

9. Daniil Pakhomov, Russia: Russia’s Daniil Pakhomov has already starred at the Youth Olympic Games and the European Games. Just turned 17, Pakhomov is the top seed in two of the three butterfly races in Singapore, and is only a few tenths out of contention in the third event. He’s one of a couple Russians looking for sweeps of their respective strokes, along with…

10. Anton Chupkov, Russia: Already the Junior World Record-holder in the 100 and 200 breasts, Chupkov gets to contend for all three breaststroke titles, and will match up against a couple of high-profile Americans: the aforementioned Andrew and 6-foot-8 youngster Reece Whitley. Also in the hunt in those events will be Italy’s European Games star Nicolo Martinenghi and Lithuania’s Andrius Sidlauskas.