2025 World Junior Swimming Championships
- August 19-24, 2025
- Otopeni, Romania
- LCM (50 meters)
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The U.S. continues to lead the World Junior Championships medal table following the fourth finals session, picking up three more medals to bring their tally to seven golds and a total of 15 medals. The Neutral Athletes ‘B’ team trails close behind with 5 golds and 12 total medals.
China turned in a strong showing during finals to hold onto its #3 spot on the medal table, going 1-2 in the girls’ 400 free. Yang Peiqi won gold in record-setting fashion, breaking the Championship Record in the event, while teammate Yan Tiaoshan secured silver. Peiqi has single-handedly brought home all three of China’s gold medals through this point of the meet.
Team USA and NAB seem to be largely in control of the medal table for now, but day 4 of World Juniors shook things up a bit, as five different countries got onto the medal table for the first time during this competition.
New Zealand burst onto the scene with a gold medal in the girls’ 50 fly, courtesy of Zoe Pedersen. She claimed a narrow victory, getting her hand on the wall just .03 ahead of Japan’s Mizuki Hirai. That race also saw Denmark pick up its first medal of the meet, as Martine Damborg took home the bronze.
Ukraine also launched itself onto the medal table in gold-medal-fashion, with Nikita Sheremet bringing home the championship title in the boys’ 50 free. Sheremet tied both the World Junior Record and Championship Record (21.75) in the semifinals of the event on day 3.
Lena Ludwig of Germany claimed the first medal for her country in this competition. She claimed silver in the girls’ 100 breast, racing into the wall just ahead of Moon Sua, who snagged bronze to secure Korea’s first medal of the meet.
While Japan fell to 7th on the medal table, with only one gold to its name right now, the Japanese swimmers still brought home some hardware on day 4. They won three silvers and one bronze, bringing their total medal count up to 12.
World Juniors Medal Table Through Day 4
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| 1 | United States | 7 | 4 | 4 | 15 |
| 2 | NAB | 5 | 3 | 4 | 12 |
| 3 | China | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| 4 | Great Britain | 2 | 4 | 4 | 10 |
| 5 | Italy | 2 | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| 6 | Lithuania | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 7 | Japan | 1 | 6 | 5 | 12 |
| 8 | Argentina | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 9 | Ireland | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 10 | New Zealand | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 10 | Turkey | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 10 | Ukraine | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 13 | Brazil | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 13 | Germany | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 13 | Romania | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 16 | Canada | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 16 | Denmark | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 16 | South Korea | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
japan with 6 silver medals😭😭
Japan just went 1 – 2 in the men’s 400 IM, consistent with PBs.
Australia is yet to win a medal
😱😱😱😱😱😱
lol we knew we had a weak team, but our top seeds who should be medaling are off their best times as well. Oh well, just one of those meets I guess!
Just won Gold in Women’s 50 Back.
Dont often see Australia not on the medal table
imo this meet has to be very very scary for usa swimming. and i dont mean the us mens teams performance — more so that there are so many big stars emerging on the mens side from other countries…
dambrosio, nowacki, ohashi, juska, shcherbakov, kojima, numata, sheremet, tuncelli all look like they could be very dangerous in 2028 and 2032, as in individually medal if not win (and contribute to relays)….
i didnt do the math but just eyeballing their age group times, im pretty sure theyre as fast or faster than the key generational stars on the us mens side heilman, williamson, mijatovic, mckean. and thats not to mention how these 4 will have to get past… Read more »
the only saving grace i think is that i think the aussies will have a small generational gap by 2028 and theyre the only country that can consolidate more gold medals than the us. so the gold medal race is prob fine lol
Not scary. Great to see the level of competition rise globally. I love to see swimmers from the US challenged by the best in the world, not just the best in their own country.
Some of those guys are on teams where relays are irrelevant.
Not scary at all when US women’s team is their strongest in decades, and their closest competitor in medal table, Australia, has extremely weak juniors. Australia has not even won a medal, their current juniors are their weakest in decades.
Toohey is missing. Plus Iona Anderson who has aged up.. plus we have some really good 15-16 year olds who didn’t quite make this team. I think we will be okay.
While the meet has been a bit disappointing, I don’t think alarm bells are going off just yet.. As is with the 2 year cycle sometimes, we are a bit off this year – there seem to be a couple of very promising juniors coming through in the 15s age group on the men side and only 2 years ago the women won 6 medals in the backstroke events and won the 50m, 100m,400m , 4×100 freestyle (including 2 medalists in the 50 and 100).
Obviously swimming countries with well over 100million people will churn out plenty of good swimmers each year – RSA, USA, China
Aussie swimming should be worried. We’re not making finals, we don’t have depth, and the men’s program has fallen way behind. Too many swimmers are just happy to make the team instead of chasing medals. The relay results say it all — we don’t have the firepower. Alarm bells should be ringing.
On a 2 year cycle it is not unexpected to have a few down years – this is one. There were definitely a few misses that could have medalled here including Allan in the backstroke events.
On the women’s side I don’t think we should be that worried.. Wunsch/Jansen/Casey will hopefully compete in the 50-200 range which will provide good depth for the foreseeable future and they are all in the top 10 age group ranking, then you have Sienna and a couple of other good breaststrokers coming through in addition to the steady flow of backstrokers.
On the mens side, sure things have been grim for a while outside of freestyle, but things are definitely looking better… Read more »
One off-meet doesn’t singularly determine a generation nor the future prospects of these young swimmers
D. Diehl, T. Heilman, C. McKean, M. Williamson have yet to prove anything on the international stage at the senior level. The aforementioned male swimmers are not generational talents but merely hype at this stage.
At the age of 16, Missy Franklin was a generational talent winning the bronze medal in the women’s 50 meter backstroke and the gold medal in the women’s 200 meter backstroke at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships. In addition, Missy Franklin led off the women’s 4 x 200 meter freestyle relay with a 1:55.06 split and anchored the women’s 4 x 100 meter medley relay with a 52.79 split at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships.
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on L. Mijatovic.
Ok I’ll bite and I’m an Aussie.
Mijatovic was sick to start with.
And men mature later in most cases as we all know. What male was winning at 16 apart from Phelps and Thorpe and they were doing that more than 20 years ago plus they were both physically the perfect build for swimming.