2019 WORLD PARA SWIMMING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
- September 9-15, 2019
- London Aquatics Centre, London, England
- Prelims 10 a.m. local time/finals 6 p.m.
- Full results
American Paralympian Becca Meyers hit her second world record of the 2019 World Para Swimming World Championships Friday, then 10 minutes later, followed it up with an American record.
Meyers swim up in the S13 class in the women’s 200 IM, earning the silver medal in 2:24.56, a new S12 world record. Italy’s Carlotta Gilli (S13) won the race in 2:24.46, and Russia’s Daria Lukyanenko (S12) took third in 2:27.91. Then, less than 30 minutes later, Meyers returned to the block for the S12 100 free and took bronze in 1:00.72, a new American record.
Meyers also broke the world record in the S12 400 free earlier in the meet.
Directly after Meyers’ second race, Australian Cameron Leslie broke the men’s S4 world record in the 50 free, winning in 37.14. Japan’s Takayuki Suzuki took second in 37.56 and Russia’s Roman Zhadanov third in 39.14.
Great Britain set the final world record of the night in the women’s 34-point 4×100 medley relay, beating the second-place American team by 22 seconds. Great Britain’s Alice Tai (S8), Brock Whiston (S9), Toni Shaw (S8) and Stephanie Millward (S9) combined for a 4:36.31.
Additional continental records broken on night 5:
- Australia’s Braeden Jason hit an Oceania record in prelims of the men’s S12 100 free, going 54.05. He then took sixth in the final in a new record of 53.86.
- Lakeisha Patterson, also of Australia, set an Oceania record in winning the S9 women’s 400 free final. She went 4:38.29, five seconds ahead of the second-place finisher Toni Shaw (4:43.20).
Medal table after night 5 – Top 5
| Rank | Federation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| 1 | Ukraine | 14 | 16 | 10 | 40 |
| 2 | Italy | 14 | 14 | 8 | 36 |
| 3 | Great Britain | 14 | 9 | 10 | 33 |
| 4 | Russia | 13 | 12 | 16 | 41 |
| 5 | United States | 9 | 12 | 4 | 35 |
By the way, since there wasn’t a thread for today’s results, I wanted to share something astonishing here.
Brock Whiston won the SM-8 individual medley (incidentally again knocking off Jessica Long, who has to be feeling like there’s some kind of hex on her right now, but I digress). So far so good. Time was 2:35.30–a world record, but not insane; it’s a long way over the SM-9 and SM-10 records, and of course the able-bodied record is 2:06 low, so it’s not in the same league (as you’d expect when talking about swimmers with multiple amputations or significant paralysis).
Look at the splits, though, and you’ll see something crazy. Whiston was not the fastest in the butterfly; in fact,… Read more »
I bet Steve Long”s head has exploded
And the UK NGB and IPC will say “nothing to see here”.
… and the IPC will ignore all of this and carry on with the CP circus.
I looked. She has an Instagram.
Unless she’s been living a carefully planned and coordinated disability fraud going back many years before she started swimming internationally, she’s got CP. You could argue she should be SM9 or SM10 but, again, that split was crazy regardless of classification.
You ought to cross reference her social media with her personal best times. It is quite obvious that the change in times correlates with the wearing of AFOs and shoulder braces over clothing. It is again quite obvious that her times dramatically return to her previous marks once she has secured her classification.
https://instagram.com/brock_whiston?igshid=150tqr04il17u
Individual Best Times (All Time) | Swim England
https://www.swimmingresults.org/individualbest/personal_best_time_date.php?back=individualbestname&name=Whiston&tiref=183320&mode=A&tstroke=8&tcourse=L
Probably incorrect to put Whiston in the same basket as Patterson, atm. Patterson who most definitely does not have Cerebral Palsy.
The concern with swimmers like Whiston though is the coaching behind the grandstanding – the walk, getting on the block… Read more »
Is there underwater video of her breaststroke anywhere? I’d love to see it.
You really should do a piece on the para sport tier system.. and forgive me if you have already done so.(I obviously have not seen it). I’ve said this before, I think we need some sort of understanding to benchmark the performances of para-related stories that are posted. Thanks!
We did one a few years ago, and have done some updates since. Part of the problem is that at this point, I don’t think that anybody really understands the system and where the lines are being drawn.
https://swimswam.com/para-pan-pacs-preview-decoding-s1-s14-classification-system/
Well said Braden.
The only lines that can cleanly be drawn are that 1-10 are physical impairments, 11-13 are visual impairments*, and 14 is an intellectual impairment.
Beyond that, it’s sort of a holistic measure of how severe the impairment is. Unlike in some other sports, notably track and field, different types of disability are not parsed out, so you can have one swimmer with an amputation, another with cerebral palsy, a third with short-limbed dwarfism, and a fourth with paralysis all in the same race.
This system is extremely vulnerable to errors and, sometimes, outright fraud, but it’s debatable whether there’s a viable alternative. Track and field just has more athletes, so they can break up the classifications a bit more… Read more »
More like a game of bingo at the moment pick a number out the bag and see what you get