2025 World Championships
- July 27 – August 3, 2025 (pool swimming)
- Singapore, Singapore
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- LCM (50m)
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The World Championships has so far seen a number of small upsets in terms of some of the highest ranked swimmers in the world not making it to the finals of their top events, and day 5 added another event to that pattern.
Team USA’s Jack Aikins and Italy’s Thomas Ceccon both missed the cutoff for semifinals in the men’s 200 back, failing to advance out of prelims in the event.
Aikins came into the meet as the top seed in the 200 back, having won the event at the U.S. National Championships in a lifetime best 1:54.25, but fell far down the ranking this morning to place 24th overall in 1:58.56. Aikins has been far off of his top times at this meet, as earlier this week he finished 44th in the 100 back with a 56.54, almost four seconds off of his personal best (52.74).
While the 200 back is not Ceccon’s best event, he finished 9th at the Paris Olympics last summer and was the #9 seed coming into Singapore. He narrowly missed the semifinal today, as he took 17th in 1:57.15, just .04 behind 16th-place qualifier Pieter Coetze of South Africa (1:57.11). The World Record-holder in the 100 back, Ceccon won silver in the 100 back behind Coetze earlier in the meet with a 51.90.
Aikin’s performance this morning brought his campaign in Singapore to a close, while Ceccon has two more events on his lineup: the 50 back and the 100 fly.
That’s a hell of a swim from Aikans. 56.8 equates to about a 2:02-2:04 for most people. Obviously his health recovered a little since the 100
Aikins has had a lot of bad luck between just missing the Olympics twice and now getting sick at Worlds. I hope he sticks with swimming and gives LA a shot. What a story it would be if he finally put together his best meet there.
This is very unfortunate, but he’s not going anywhere!
what is going on at this meet…….
Despite horrible terrible no good very bad start, Keaton Jones made it to semis and salvage US honor from the awful fate of being the first time ever not to have a swimmer in 100 and 200 back semis.
I didn’t think it was possible for an American swimmer of that caliber to be so remarkably inept at the start.
It’s like a PGA pro who tees off with a 9 iron
I wish the focus was more on determining what and how it happened so that it can be prevented in the future!