Russia’s Junior Championships kicked off Monday, with the top youth athletes in the country competing for spots on a Russian international team.
The event is for boys age 15-16 and girls age 13-14.
The Russian Junior Championships are taking place in Volgograd from Monday to Friday. The meet is serving as Russia’s selection meet for the European Youth Olympic Festival, to take place in the nation of Georgia from July 26-31.
Three meet records went down in just five events with finals on day 1.
Jana Kudryavtseva knocked down the first one, going 2:18.36 to win the girls 200 fly. That time came out of the preliminaries and took eight tenths of a second off the previous record. Kudryavtseva wasn’t able to re-break the record in the final, but still picked up the win in 2:20.03.
The other girls record fell a few events later in the 400 IM. Alexandra Denisenko took that one down, going 4:50.17. She was chased very closely by Darya Loboda (4:51.66), but held on for the win. Both girls were under the old record, set 14 years ago by Jana Tolkachev. That old mark was 4:52.71.
The only boys record of day 1 came in the night’s final event, the 4×100 free relay. Swimming in front of a home crowd, Volgograd’s Pavel Tatarenko, Maxim Zlobin, Andrew Vanteeva and Daniel Kitov went 2:28.28, just sneaking under the old record by three tenths.
