AUSTRALIAN AGE GROUP CHAMPIONSHIPS (AUS)
- April 7th – April 12th
- Prelims at 9am local/Finals 6pm local
- Gold Coast Swimming & Aquatic Centre
- Non-Olympic Qualifying Event, but impacts junior selection for int’l meets
- Live Results
After Elizabeth Dekkers already put on a show last night in the women’s 200m fly here at these Australian Age Group Championships, today it was 15-year-old Flynn Southam‘s turn.
Competing in the men’s 100m freestyle for his age group here at the Gold Coast Swimming & Aquatic Centre, Bond’s Southam scorched a new lifetime best of 49.55 to take the event by just under 2 solid seconds.
His outing dropped .10 off of his own previous impressive age record from last December when he hit 49.65 to overtake Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers’ age record.
Splits for Southam’s previous speedy swim from December included 24.51/25.14 while tonight’s time was comprised of 24.23/25.32.
Prior to his December performance, Southam had never before been under the 50-second mark, let alone the 52-second mark. The kid’s personal best in this event previously stood at the 52.52 he logged at the 2019 Queensland Championships.
For perspective, Jacob Whittle of GBR hit a time of 49.97 as a 15-year-old, while Romania’s David Popovici was 49.82 as a 14-year-old. The latter has dropped that PB down to 49.26 as a 16-year-old now.
As another angle, consider that Southam’s 49.55 tonight would rank the Bond teen as the 2nd fastest man ever in the 15-16 age group in U.S. history, sitting only behind Caeleb Dressel’s 49.28 and now bumping up ahead of Destin Lasco’s 49.67.
Flynn’s now lowered his 50 free record from 22.91 to 22.83.
He did a 22.07 relay split on the 4 x 50 14-15 boys relay too
Commentaors have mentioned Sam Short and Isaac Cooper will als compete at open nationals but they’re not on the start lists. Anyone know which is right?
I think they’re talking about the Olympic trials in June
They said next week.
Will be at his peak for his home Olympics in 2032! 🙂
Joshua Collett split a 49.4 in the relay but was only 1:58 in the 200 free this morning – bizarre
Surprising to me that Kyle Chalmers didn’t go faster at 15 given he was 50-mid at 14 and then 48-mid at 15.
49.55 is a crazy swim at 15 by any measure though.
48-mid at 16 I think
Yes my bad. Too many age groups to keep in order!
48-mid at 16 you mean?
A couple other good swims for the 17 year old boys – 100m Back Isaac Cooper 54.5 (age record) and 200m free Sam Short 1:47.6
Kai 1.49 is on track also for good things.
Also Buckingham (1:02.08) and Petric (1:02.76) now 2 and 3 in 16 yo 100 BR behind Wilson.
Wow what a swimmer, this guy is only 15 years old, 49.55.
Could be the next big thing, He seems to have his head screwed on as well!
Maybe he’ll keep on this trajectory and make his first international team next year.