2019 FINA World Aquatics Championships: Day 1 Finals Preview

2019 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS

• All sports: Friday, July 12 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
• Pool swimming: Sunday, July 21 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
• The Nambu University Municipal Aquatics Center, Gwangju, Korea
• Meet site
• Competition Schedule
• FinaTV Live Stream
• Entry Lists
• Start Lists
• Results
• Day-by-day timeline

The first finals session of the 2019 World Championships is just hours away, with the first 4 world champions to be crowned. After Sunday morning, the men’s and women’s 400 free will go straight to the final, where the top 8 will fight for the world title. Likewise, the men’s and women’s 4×100 free relays will also swim for medals after the preliminaries session. Four more semifinals will be contested this session, the women’s 100 fly, men’s 50 fly, men’s 100 breast, and women’s 200 IM.

Day 1 Events:

• Men’s 400 free- Final
• Women’s 100 fly- Semifinal
• Men’s 50 fly- Semifinal
• Women’s 400 free- Final
• Men’s 100 breast- Semifinal
• Women’s 200 IM- Semifinal
• Men’s 4×100 free relay- Final
• Women’s 4×100 free relay- Final

Tonight, many anticipated rivalries will be pitted against one another in the semifinals/finals events. Meanwhile, some of the event favorites are aiming to make their statement in the history books for medal counts and record times.

Day 1 Finals Session Top Storylines to Follow:

• American Katie Ledecky and Aussie Ariarne Titmus will finally meet up in the 400 free final after many threats in the world rankings. During prelims, both Ledecky and Titmus looked smooth, swimming easy 4:01/4:02 times respectively. Tonight, the race will be on between the accomplished American and rising Aussie teenager.
• The women’s 4×100 free relay will be one of the biggest battles in the pool. With Australia, Canada, and USA looking to swap out spots to show up in finals, the race will be on to claim the world title. Reminder that Australia are the current world record-holders in this event. Sweden bumped themselves up to 3rd with a powerful line-up (Coleman, Sjostrom, Eriksson, Hansson), but will keep the same swimmers in the final.
• Chinese Olympic champion Sun Yang returns to defend his 400 free world title. Yet, Lithuania’s Danas Rapsys and Aussie Jack McLoughlin follow closely behind Sun. After having an altercation during pre-meet warmups, Sun and Aussie Mack Horton will already have fire against each other heading into the final.
• Into the men’s 50 fly, American Caeleb Dressel and Ukrainian Andrii Govorov come in tied as the top semifinals seeds with a 22.84. While the duo controlled their heats, defending world champ Ben Proud and defending SC world champ Nicholas Santos finished in 9th/11th respectively.
• Both Sarah Sjostrom and Emma McKeon will be chasing legendary gold medal counts, yet will meet up together in the women’s 100 fly. As the duo lead semifinals with the lone sub-57 swims, the coming final will be a fight like none other for world championships history.
• The USA men look to have the 4×100 free relay in the bag, but the race for silver will not be a stroll in the park. Third-seeded Russia will swap in Vladimir Morozov into the final, yet #2 Great Britain and #4 Australia will likely not change their lineups.
• Katinka Hosszu wowed the field (and herself) will another all-time top 10 time in the women’s 200 IM, leading the semifinals by 2 seconds. Emerging from her 2012 Olympic success is Chinese Ye Shiwen, who is the second seed into semifinals ahead of USA’s Melanie Margalis and Canada’s Sydney Pickrem.
• Adam Peaty continues his chase to the 56-second barrier in the 100 breast, putting up the top prelims time of 57.59. With his championship record of 57.47 and world record of 57.10 now tenths away, we could be seeing Peaty continue to re-write history.

The first finals session begins at 8PM Gwangju time, 7AM US Eastern time.