2025 World Junior Swimming Championships
- August 19-24, 2025
- Otopeni, Romania
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The first day of racing at the World Junior Championships has come to a close, and the Neutral Athlete ‘B’ team, represented by Russian swimmers, leads the medal table in terms of both gold and total medal count.
NAB picked up two golds and one silver to walk away with three medals following day one, giving them an early edge over the other countries in attendance. Picking up the first gold for the NAB athletes was Grigorii Vekovishchev, who set a Russian Junior Record en route to winning the boys’ 400 free, while teammate Egor Babinich took silver behind him to give the squad two medals in the first event of the meet.
After claiming two medals within one race, NAB did not win another medal until the second-to-last event, but they certainly made it count. The team of Mikhail Shcherbakov, Roman Zhidkov, Egor Proshin and Georgii Zlotnikov prevailed in the boys’ 4×100 freestyle relay, setting a new World Junior Record and Championship Record in the process.
The only other two countries to bring home gold medals on day one were China and Argentina. The Chinese team of Yan Tiaoshan, Gong Zhenqi, Luo Mingyu and Yang Peiqi won the girls’ 4×200 freestyle relay, fighting off Team USA to secure the victory by over a second and narrowly miss the World Junior Record.
Meanwhile, Argentine Agostina Hein turned in a tremendous performance in the girls’ 400 IM, taking down the Championship, South American and Argentine National Record by massive margins in the event.
The United States got off to a slower start than usual at the World Junior Championships, as they came away with no event victories through day one. The Americans still managed to pick up two medals: Kennedi Dobson, Lily King, Kayla Han and Rylee Erisman took silver in the girls’ 4×200 free relay, while Austin Carpenter, Rowan Cox, Kenneth Barnicle and Mike Rice snagged bronze in the boys’ 4×100 free relay.
Of note is the fact that at the 2023 championship, the United States won gold in three of the four finals raced on day one: the girls’ 400 IM, boys’ 4×100 free relay and the girls’ 4×200 free relay.
World Juniors Medal Table Through Day 1
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| 1 | NAB | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 2 | China | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 3 | Argentina | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 4 | Italy | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 4 | United States | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 6 | Great Britain | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 7 | Japan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Looks like the USA team under performance with mens mid distance swimmers Tim Who? And Norvin Clutz.?
400 free relay was a long shot and given how well China swam the women’s relay, silver is fine.
We were not favored to win the 400 free or 400 IM
What’s more noteworthy: no golds for the US or no medals at all for Australia?
Aside from Henry Allen, Men’s 50m Free, Women’s Breast and Women’s Back, Australia actually doesn’t have many medal contenders at all.
Perhaps the most concerning is lack of freestyle depth shown in the relays
ive flagged this previously but most of the best juniors for the aussies appear to be men and they need a couple more years to pop.
its a bit more thin on the womens side which feels concerning imo, especially as many of their top guns likely only have 1-2 peak olympic cycles left.
Juniors have always been mixed bag. A lot of our best swimmers did not have success at this particular meet at all. McKeown, Titmus never medalled, and Mollie only has a silver from the relay.
We won the 2013 and 2015 World Junior Champs and the only direct benefit from that was Kyle Chalmers for Rio.
We only got 5 medals in 2017, but we did do better in 2019 with 4 golds (3 of them being Lani Pallister sweeping the distance events).
I think Australia succeeds best at developing champion swimmers from the 18-21 age bracket.
oooh that is very true but didnt kaylee still set a bunch of age group records?
interesting the opposite has been the case in the us w many promising junior women regressing or stalling in college… would expect the opposite since australian swimming seems more yardage based and thus would assume be more prone to burnout
Kaylee did have age group records. Maybe she never swam Junior worlds? I don’t know.
I have little experience in college so can’t speak for it. My suggestion is that the majority of those that reach college level were never good enough to make seniors anyway? Maybe it’s more of a numbers thing than the actual success of the program.
The main takeaway is to never extrapolate global success from juniors, because it’s a whole different world. You look at past junior champions, and many of them never transitioned to senior. We’re also dealing with a ~3-year age group bracket. Whereas Seniors will be factoring athletes of a 10+ year age group bracket at their peak.
Because of this, it’s… Read more »
i kinda disagree you cant extrapolate anything from world juniors. the aussie women at this meet seem to be struggling to make it into finals. that seems like an issue.
the top guns you mentioned before might not have been world junior champions but they were still up there in the same vicinity as the fastest juniors. moc and ariarne and meg didnt come out of nowhere. they might not have been the best but they were among the best and then popped later (altho moc popped fairly early lol).
if youre not <<among>> the best as a junior, you either have to have crazy improvement trajectories later in your career which is kinda uncommon among women. not to… Read more »
you know a lot can happen in 1-2 olympic cycles.
That’s the point I’m trying to make.
Junior champs only comprise of competitors of a 3 year age bracket. Professional athletes can have a competitive career of 10+ years. It’s totally fine to have an “off” junior cycle as the current young Australian crop (particularly the class of 2023) can carry us to until we look at the next generation in 2029.
And this isn’t factoring in the many breakthroughs from those that are not at this meet or will peak a little later in life.
The main takeaway: Never extrapolate senior results from junior results. Do so at your own peril. You only need to look at the many past junior championships that never make it to the big… Read more »
I literally thought this when SwimStats posted their top junior winners ever.
Most successful juniors at worlds: Oleksiak, Ruck, Padar, Hannah, Horton, Molnar, Williamson, Walsh, Abraham. A few notable names but not exactly any superstars in there
The young women of the Class of 2023 have certainly franked their form from World Juniors with 6 out of 7 individual medallists advancing to the senior LC team within two years.
All 6 have collected either gold or silver medals at OLY/WC.
For younger juniors there are a lot more men, but the women have a heap in the 18-20 range who could still kick around well past Brisbane. Barclay, Wunsch, Jansen, J Perkins, Casey, Anderson, Dekkers, Connor, Miller. Toohey probably the biggest legit junior star right now. Shumack, Koch, Mackinder, Amundsen, Pope, Huisman, Sheridan all with potential
I just want to make sure we don’t embarrass ourselves at Brisbane. They can flop all they want afterwards at this stage haha