Disclaimer: Dolfin Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Dolfin Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
Croatia’s Franko Grgic won the 2019 World Junior title in the 1500 free by more than 13 full seconds. The young distance sensation is putting distance between himself and the rest of the junior world in that race, and hit the best junior swim in history.
While not all world junior records are the fastest swim ever by a junior (due to a quirk in when the records were first compiled), Grgic’s is. And he tops some pretty big names from history.
Based on FINA junior eligibility (based on birth year rather than specific date), Grgic is much faster than Australian Grant Hackett (14:50.92) was back in 1998. He’s also faster than Sun Yang was in 2009 (14:46.84)
Grigic’s time would have been 6th at the senior world championships, and he finishes the year ranked #6 worldwide. Oh, and Grgic is just 16 – meaning he has all of 2020 and all of 2021 to continue lowering his true world junior record.
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Watching Grgic’s race, with the virtual line of Horton’s WJR pretty distant after the turn and then surpassed by Grgic in the swimming phase, before next turn, I thought how much room for improvement the 16 year-old Croatian has in the 29 turns of a 1500 LCM.
Reminding the 1500 free at Worlds, Wellbrock was better than Romanchuk and far better than Paltrinieri in the turn’ phase. An analitical comparison with also Grgic’s WJR would be very interesting.