2019 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS
- All sports: Friday, July 12 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
- Pool swimming: Sunday, July 21 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
- The Nambu University Municipal Aquatics Center, Gwangju, Korea
- Meet site
- Competition Schedule
- FinaTV Live Stream
- Entry Lists
- Results
After a sluggish start to the 2019 World Championships (dampened not only by some lackluster performances but also by Katie Ledecky‘s illness that kept her from two of her four individual races), Team USA picked things up over the last few days– the women, that is.
It was Lilly King who took her second breaststroke gold of the meet with the only sub-30 performance of the final in the 50 breast. King hasn’t been quite on her bests, but she’s been a go-to force for Team USA and she added another gold to their count.
Proving yet again that she has some otherworldly magic that she brings to her swims, Simone Manuel ripped another incredibly clutch race in the women’s 50 free. Her hand has found the wall first in both sprint events despite the lifetime bests and relay abilities of Cate Campbell and Sarah Sjöström, and her win in that 50 was emphatic.
In the final event of the meet, the U.S. women put an exclamation point on the week with a thunderous World Record in the 4×100 medley relay.
Things kicked off with Regan Smith‘s WR in the lead-off at 57.57, blowing past Kathleen Baker‘s 58.00. Smith, who has broken backstroke WRs at both Olympic distances and now as part of the 4×100 medley relay, has been consistently lights-out for the Americans. Whereas some of the senior members of the team missed the mark this week, which some likened to the American team’s hollow performance in 2015, Smith was always on her game this week. Smith will head into the Olympic year as the next big thing, and with it, she’ll bring heightened prestige to Team USA.
On that medley relay, it felt like the U.S. women, in particular, were business as usual. They have dominated the medley relay since Rio, and we saw King do what she had to do, Dahlia unearth a great 56-low split despite her 100 fly being off this week, and Manuel bring it all home with the best split of the field (51.86).
It was the women who were responsible for all three of Team USA’s golds as they finished with a combined 14 from the entire team over this week. In total, that’s 27 medals for Team USA, four more than in 2015, but not up to par with their whopping 38 from 2017. Meanwhile, Manuel’s seven medals makes her the most successful American female at a single LC Worlds medals-wise, Caeleb Dressel did the same with his eight medals, and Dressel won the male swimmer of the meet award.
U.S. MEN – MEDAL TABLE
GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE |
5 | 3 | 2 |
U.S. WOMEN – MEDAL TABLE
GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE |
8 | 4 | 3 |
U.S. MIXED RELAYS – MEDAL TABLE
GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE |
1 | 1 | 0 |
More North American Notables:
- Jay Litherland had a great swim to hit a lifetime best in the 400 IM, nearly running down Japan’s Daiya Seto en route to a silver medal, his first at a LC international champs.
- The US men’s 4×100 medley relay of Ryan Murphy, Andrew Wilson, Caeleb Dressel, and Nathan Adrian collected the silver medal. Dressel had the best 100 fly split in history – 49.28.
- The Canadian women’s 4×100 medley relay of Kylie Masse, Sydney Pickrem, Maggie Macneil, and Penny Oleksiak earned the bronze. Macneil’s 55.56 fly split moved them briefly into second place and was the fastest in the field.
BROKEN NORTH AMERICAN RECORDS:
- Women’s 4×100 medley relay: World/American/North American Record, Smith/King/Dahlia/Manuel (3:50.40)
- Women’s 100 Back: World/American/North American Record, Regan Smith (57.57)
NORTH AMERICA — DAY 8 MEDAL TABLE
RANK | COUNTRY | GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE | TOTAL |
1 | USA | 3 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
8 | Canada | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
I wonder how seriously US Swimming takes this meet vs preparation for Tokyo. The qualifying process for this pre Olympic team is always a bit weird and a lot of the swimmers making the team are veterans looking at peaking next year. The men in particular seemed undercooked, without Dressel it would have been mostly bleak. Still, this was certainly a lot better than the drudgery of the last pre Olympic WCs, 2015 WCs… 11th place in the 4×100.
lol
Feels like the US straightened out a lot of problems, but also created a few more. We got a consistent sub 59 breastroker, simone showed again that she can throw down, and half our team can now do sub 48 100 frees. Yet now we have a male sprint backstroke problem, an envigorated GB medley team, and a katie ledecky that has a seed of self doubt…
Interesting shakeup all around
Also for some reason our IM now sucks
Jeah it does.
Dominated since Rio is dead wrong. They lost to Australia in Pan PAC 2018. However if they keep it up like this World Champs, they are highly unlikely to be defeated. Go 🇺🇸
This was an incredible meet. Is it just me, or does the quality of times and exciting races at this meet seem better than the Olympics?
Probably feels like that because Dressel really came on to the scene after 2016 Rio and every time he swims we can expect something mind blowing
Where’s the pickem results
Would be interesting to see a breakdown of the American medals by men/women overall. Feels like other than Dressel, Litherland (sadly only one event), Apple (only relays) and Wilson (no individual medals but outperformed expectations) the men really failed to step up. But I’d like to put numbers to that rather than just say the women had a good meet and the men fell on their faces.
Pieroni swam well too.
Yep this is why I need a breakdown. It was a long week, I totally forgot about Blake.
The breakdown is pretty simple:
50/100: Pieroni and Dressel good, MA meh
200/400: Blah to super blah
800/1500: ???
Fly: Dressel good, MA’s 50 fly good, everyone else meh
Back: I guess okay? Nothing near best times for Murph but he did medal an event. MA’s 50 back was disappointing given he had been fast enough to medal multiple times this year.
Breast: Wilson good, everyone else meh
IM: Kalisz obviously off, really good for Litherland, very meh for Devine.
Relay-only swimmers: Apple great, one great swim for Adrian, everything else meh
Definitely wasn’t MA…
MA didn’t medal, but was the first person to ever make the finals of all 4 strokes.
Gee, hadn’t heard that before….
I’m a fan of MA and it’s exciting he made all the finals, but a bit disappointing that he didn’t medal in any. Anyone know how his Worlds times compare to his in-season bests this year? Did we set our expectations too high or did he underperform?
The man is 19 swimming 50s against mid 20-30 year olds. I would say he is in a really good spot looking to 2020. Let the man gain some more muscle, he is still developing.
He is 20