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
Although not an Olympic-qualifying competition, the 2021 Australian Age Group Championships are still an important stepping stone for many young budding stars as they vie for selection to elite international junior meets.
One such racer is 16-year-old Elizabeth Dekkers of Newmarket Racers. Dekkers has been making waves on the 200m fly scene over the past year, culminating in a big-time result of 2:07.82 at December’s Queensland Championships. That produced a new Aussie age record for the teen in the process.
Tonight at the Gold Coast Swimming & Aquatic Centre, however, Dekkers had designs on blowing that previous result to bits, stopping the clock in an eye-popping 2:07.25.
Opening in 1:01.23 and bringing it home in 1:06.02, Dekkers raced essentially unchallenged, with the next closest competitor getting to the wall over 6 seconds later. Dekkers’ impressive outing here not only hacked nearly half a second off of the aforementioned previous Age Record, but it also keeps the teen ranked #6 in the world this season.
For extra perspective, Dekkers’ 2:07.25 time here tonight would have placed 4th at the 2019 FINA World Championships. It would also rank Dekkers as the 2nd fastest U.S. 15-16-year-old 200m flyer of all time, ahead of Regan Smith and behind Mary T. Meagher.
2020-2021 LCM Women 200 Fly
Yufei
2:03.86
| 2 | Regan Smith | USA | 2:05.30 | 07/29 |
| 3 | Zhang Yifan | CHN | 2:05.49 | 12/31 |
| 4 | Hali Flickinger | USA | 2:05.65 | 07/29 |
| 5 | Boglarka Kapas | HUN | 2:06.50 | 05/20 |
Brillant swim in terrible conditions. Can she qualify for Tokyo?
Apparently her winning time is already inside the qualifying time for a Tokyo.. she just needs to replicate it at Trials I suppose .. not sure we have many Aussie contenders in this event .. Laura Taylor seems to have gone backwards since her comm games breakout
Yeah I think th Roswell would wanna focus on that relay instead since it’s probably a better chance at olympic gold for her than the 200 fly
Certainly not a strong event for AUS, even with a relatively soft QT, so she’s probably at the head of the queue. Suspect you may be right with regards to Throssell seeing freestyle relay selection as her prime route to selection. The 2nd 100fly spot behind McKeon does look very open and she’s certainly in that picture but, whilst she made the final in Gwangju, she’s probably needing to drop around 0.5sec to repeat that in Tokyo. What we DON’T know is just what impact Titmus’ injury has taken/may play and how that impacts not only individual races but also 4×200.
A 16 year old wins a age championship in a time that would’ve nearly won both the Russian & Japanese (only 0.01 faster) Olympic trials & you say not a strong event for Australia.
Whoosh!
We’ve been waiting for a young bolter in this event for too long – fingers crossed Dekkers can push on now.
Congrats Lizzy! Amazing