2025 World Junior Swimming Championships
- August 19-24, 2025
- Otopeni, Romania
- LCM (50 meters)
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The third night of finals at the 2025 World Junior Championships was one for the books, with stars Rylee Erisman, Audrey Derivaux, Tajus Juska, and Nikita Sheremet breaking championship, world junior, and/or national records. However, SwimSwam wants to highlight a few performances that may have gone under the radar and weren’t discussed in significant detail in its own article or during the live recap:
- Vasileios Kakoulakis of Greece dropped 8 seconds in the 800 free to dip under 8 minutes for the first time. His time of 7:58.90 is a continuation of the impressive meet he has had thus far, as he dropped 5 seconds in the 400 earlier this week.
- Lena Ludwig popped a 1:07.75 in the 100 breast to qualify in 2nd for tomorrow night’s final. This marked the German’s first time under the 1:08 barrier in her career, who entered the meet with a time of 1:08.03.
- Carlos D’Ambrosio produced the fastest split of the field in the mixed 4×100 free relay, helping Italy to a bronze medal. Despite diving into the pool in 5th place, D’Ambrosio’s 47.40 shot Italy up to first after his leg.
- Jacob Millis also impressed on the mixed free relay, swimming 22.93/24.83 to split 47.76. Though the Brit has been :48 on relays four times just this meet, tonight was his first time under that 48 barrier.
- Great Britain’s Theodora Taylor swam an impressive double en route to two medals tonight. She entered the meet with a best time of 54.59 in the 100 free and slowly ate at it throughout the meet, going 54.46 in prelims, 54.52 in semi-finals, before dropping to 54.20 in finals. After Erisman, she had the fastest closing split of the field, coming home in 27.90 to go from 5th at the 50 mark to secure the bronze medal. Less than 30 minutes later, Taylor anchored Great Britain to a silver medal in 54.06—the fastest non-American split of the field. In total, she had five swims in two nights and came away with three medals, a herculean effort for the 16-year-old.
Erisman and King did the same double lol
And they were both faster both times.
I think they’re more talking about Theodora doing 8 races in 2 days including heats of both relays and the 50 Breast final. 3 more races than Erisman and 4 more than King.
Also this is an article of under the radar swims that “weren’t discussed in significant detail in its own article or during the live recap”, Erisman’s 52.7 and King anchoring the relay were not under the radar.
Does British swimming give junior swimmers any latitude (just ahead of the meet) to drop individual races? If so we can assume it was Taylor’s and her coach’s decision to swim the 50 breast. In hindsight it doesn’t seem like the best maximization.
Erisman, perhaps wisely, decided to drop the 100 back & was replaced by another teammate that qualified in another event. Rylee has a pb of 59.39, essentially a similar time to Crush’s entry seed. Given her form & improvement here she would’ve had a great chance to win gold in that. But it’s a long meet and obviously didn’t want to wear the treads thin already (she’ll swim on every relay).