2025 ROMANIAN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Wednesday, April 9th – Sunday, April 13th
- Otopeni, Romania
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- SwimSwam Preview
- Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap
- Results
- Livestream
The 2025 Romanian National Championships entered day four with the penultimate prelims session featuring Olympic champion David Popovici.
20-year-old Popovici took on the heats of the men’s 100m free this morning where he wasted no time putting up a swift marker of 47.30 to stake his claim on the event.
Opening in 22.96 and closing in 24.34, Popovici’s outing rocketed him up the world rankings to now sit as the 2nd-best performer in the world right now. Only Aussie Kyle Chalmers has been faster, courtesy of the 47.27 he clocked at the Bergen Swim Festival.
2024-2025 LCM Men 100 Free
Chalmers
47.27
| 2 | David POPOVICI | ROU | 47.30 | 04/12 |
| 3 | Kim Youngbeom | KOR | 47.96 | 03/24 |
| 4 | Thomas CECCON | ITA | 48.17 | 03/16 |
| 5 | Maxime GROUSSET | FRA | 48.20 | 04/05 |
Of note, Patrick Dinu claimed this morning’s 2nd seed in a solid 48.86. That sliced .01 off his previous personal bet of 48.87 notched at last year’s European Championships.
As for Popovici, his 47.30 ranks as the 8th-fastest time of his young career.
David Popovici‘s Top 10 LCM 100 Freestyle Performances
- 46.86 – 2022
- 46.88 – 2024
- 46.98 – 2022
- 47.07 – 2022
- 47.13 – 2022
- 47.20 – 2022
- 47.22 – 2024
- 47.30 – 2021 & 2025
- 47.37 – 2022
- 47.49 – 2024
This performance is par for the course for Popovici at these championships. He already claimed gold in the 50m free in a new lifetime best and national record of 21.83. He also nabbed the 200m free title in a time of 1:45.07 to rank #2 in the world.
The Germans were really good at blitzkrieg😂😂😂
It should be a lot easier to tell who is actually on world record pace at the 300 or 350 now that he came home 55.95/27.57 instead of an otherwordly 52.9/25.77.
55.95 is not even a slow last 100.
I’m sad that Maertens will only have this world record for some days because Wiffen said he’s gonna break it 😂
I’m sure he’s shaking in his boots.
Wow this was greatly unexpected. Never did I expect Paul Biedermann would be getting removed from the record books in the middle of April at some rather low profile meet.
400m world record splits are the complete opposite of what they were before. He absolutely started like a bullet, 1:47.5 at the 200
Will we see a 1:43 in the 200?
Maybe yeah, he was 1:44.14 last year after going 3:40.3. This isn’t linear but i wouldn’t be surprised
I mean, he stressed the front half even more this time.
Ladies and gentlemen History has finally been made Lukas Martens has broken Paul Biedermann’s 400 freestyle WR and barely broke 3:40.00 3:39.96!!!
Finally
What?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s a long time coming cause we all thought he’s gonna do it at Olympics last year.
Yesssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats insane
We are so back