2015 FINA Junior World Championships: Day 1 Prelims Preview

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 last major meet of the summer, FINA’s Junior World Championships are finally upon us. The week of action will kick off from Singapore Tuesday at 10AM local time, which is 10PM Monday night for those on the U.S.’s East Coast.

As a reminder, you can find our full meet preview here, but we’ve got a quick primer for you on day 1’s heats and a handful of races to watch for.

Boys 100 Breast

This might be the race of the meet, and it happens right out of the gate on day 1. Junior world record-holder Anton Chupkov leads the final circle-seeded heat, but he’s got giant U.S. threat Reece Whitley (just 15 years old and 6-foot-8) breathing down his neck one lane over.

One heat earlier, you’ve got American NAG record-holder Michael Andrew in one of his two races of the day, squaring off against Italy’s European Youth Olympic Festival star Nicolo Martinenghi. Also watch for Lithuanian Andrius Sidlauskas out of the first circle-seeded heat.

Girls 50 breast

There may not be a junior world record under siege in the women’s 50 breast (thank world record-holder Ruta Meilutyte for that), but the race should be fantastic.

Japan looks to continue their strong breaststroking tradition with Yukino Miyasaka, who is the top seed. But Sweden’s Sophie Hansson is a big-time talent, and rising American Nikol Popov is also in their heat.

One round earlier, watch Turkey’s best junior swimmer, Viktoria Zeynep Gunes, and Russia’s Mariia Astashkina leads the prior heat.

Boys 100 back

Michael Andrew‘s other big race of the day is the 100 back, where he’s the second seed. Great Britain’s Luke Greenbank dominated the backstrokes at the European Games, and he leads the field. Greenbank will take on tough young American Michael Taylor in the final heat.

Girls 400 IM

The junior world record still stands as the ‘World Best Time’ of 4:40.02 from Ella Eastin‘s winning time in 2013 at this meet, even though China’s Zhou Min went 4:35.69 back in 2014. But her record has yet to be reflected on FINA’s listing in over a year, leaving Great Britain’s Rosie Rudin with a shot to be the first to officially break the record. She comes in with a time of 4:41.76, and is the fastest seed in her heat by over three seconds.

Also watch Japan’s Hiroko Makino, who is just behind on the psych sheet.

Other events on Tuesday morning will be the boys 400 free, girls 100 back, boys 4×100 free relay and girls 4×200 free relay.