2025 European Junior Championships
- Tuesday, July 1 – Sunday, July
- X-bionic® sphere Pool, Šamorín, Slovakia
- LCM (50m)
- Start Times – Local: Prelims – 9:30 am / Finals – 6:00 pm
- Start Times – EST: Prelims – 3:30 am / Finals – 12:00 pm
- SwimSwam Preview
- Meet Central
- Entries (by event)
- Entries (by country)
- Prelims Recaps: Day 1
- Finals Recaps: Day 1
- Live European Aquatics Results
- Livestream (Pay-To-Watch)
We saw day one of the 2025 European Junior Championships unfold from Slovakia with just three races contending medals to kick off the six-day affair.
Right off the bat, British 15-year-old Amalie Smith made her presence known, firing off a new competition record of 4:37.02 to take the girls’ 400m IM event. That time crushed her former career-swiftest outing of 4:41.70 from the Luxembourg Euro Meet in January of this year to become GBR’s 6th-swiftest female in history.
On her performance, Smith told LEN European Aquatics, “It’s incredible really.
“It’s my first European juniors so to be able to achieve that is – wow! One of my goals was to get here so to get a medal is just incredible.
“It was quite crazy, I got a four second PB which is really good especially as I’ve been struggling to get near that time so I’m really impressed with that. I just kept pushing through the tough times.
“I was hoping just to get a medal but when I saw that scoreboard I was so happy and all the hard training has been worth it. This will give me a lot of confidence as I never thought I could do this, so it’s a real confidence booster.”
Then, the girls’ 4x100m free relay saw the nation of Spain deny Italy its 4th consecutive gold but the boys’ edition exacted revenge with Italy winding up on top.
Girls’ relay team member Sara Costa de Vicente told LEN European Aquatics, “This is our first medal & it makes us so happy and very proud for what we achieved together and for our country.
“We’ve worked very hard for this moment. The medal is very big and very beautiful.”
As for the Italian boys’ gold medal-winning performance, Daniele del Signore stated, “It’s my first time with this relay, they are all very happy guys right now, so I’m happy to take this medal with all of them. I want to say congratulations to all of the teams who won medals with us in the relay.
Team-mate Francesco Ceolin added:“Since I was a kid I dreamed about this and in fact I have to say I was pretty nervous but the key in our team was the ability to stay connected with one another and this is what helped me a lot. Also I tried my best to make them feel confident. I’m grateful for what we did.”
