The 2013 European Junior Championships begin Wednesday in Poznan, Poland, and there will be two big headliners in tow. One you’ve all heard of, Olympic 100 breaststroke champion Ruta Meilutyte, who is heavily favored to take both the 50 and 100 meter breaststroke titles at this summer’s World Championships.
The other is Russia’s Evgeny Sedov, who is a 2016 or even 2020 Olympic sprint contender. He went 22.6 in the 50 meter free in 2012 when he was 16, and this year at 17 has already been 22.3, plus a 49.4 in the 100 free.
He’ll also race the 50 back, the 100 back, the 50 fly, and the 100 fly, and should lead a huge Russian medal haul. The Russians didn’t have their best performance at this meet in 2011, but in 2012 they led the medal table with 12 golds (though Germany still took more overall medals). They won four of the six relays, including sweeping the women’s relays, last year.
This year between Sedov, heavy women’s backstroke favorite 14-year old Daria Ustinova, boys 100 backstroke top seed Grigory Tarasevich, and some scary-deep men’s sprint relays, the Russians should again clean up a big medal haul, though with strong teams from Great Britain and France the overall medal count could be up in the air.
But the one-woman show will be Lithuania’s Ruta Meilutyte, who will swim the 50 free and the 100 breaststroke (though, oddly, not the 50 breaststroke where she’s the European Record holder). She will probably be beginning her descent for Worlds by the time the 100 breaststroke rolls around, and there’s enough quality at this meet to give her something to race against. Ukrainian 15-year old Viktoriya Solntseva, who could be the next big thing in European breaststroking, is the 2nd seed in a 1:07.3, and Germany’s Margarethe Hummel is the defending silver medalist in the event.
Another really good race could be the men’s 200 free, where Britain’s James Guy will show down against Italy’s Andrea D’Arrigo, the latter of whom trains at the Gator Swim Club in Florida and will join the prestigious middle-distance program at Virginia in a few months.
Some details about the meet:
Live Results: http://www.ejc2013poznan.eu/?q=live
Entry Lists: http://www.ejc2013poznan.eu/?q=node/72
Start Lists: http://ejc2013poznan.eu/_swimm/live/index.html
Swimming events run from Wednesday, July 10th through Sunday, July 14th.
Sedov’s 21.88 for 50 free (SCM) aged 16 is probably more impressive than his LCM time imo.
On July 4 Meilutyte tweeted: “Taper is coming…”. There may be first signs of tapering becoming visible. As for her schedule, she’s probably pursuing a good fight. 100m breast tells them how the breast is going and 50m free is for fun and good competition. And as far as I know Hardy’s WR in 50m breast came en route to final mark :).
So Sedov beats U.S. NAG record in 100free set few days ago,cool how close all of the world is.
Caeleb Dressel has swum 22.59 so he’s faster than Sedov at the same age.
And how close is all the world? We have seen that last year when USA has won 16 gold medals out of 32 races in the pool! The second country in the medal table China has won 5 gold medals! I admit it will be much closer this year but last year was a total domination of USA.
Sedov came to the europeans with 50 free at 22.38 and 100free at 49.3 so he beats american in both events.He’s also very fast in both fly and back,yesterday he won 50fly so he is really fast.And my comment was on how close all of these times are, it’s crazy to have a dozen of teens splitting sub 50 in 100free.
Don’t forget Sweden’s Johannes Skagius in the 100 breaststroke! He’s been a 1.00.8 already this year at only 18!
Oh my bad, yes, very fast for a teen.