2020 Ukraine Winter Swimming Championships
- March 10th-13th
- Aquarena, Kharkiv, Ukraine
- Live Stream
- Entry Lists
- Olympic Qualifying Standards
The finals today kicked off with the 50m freestyle, which saw Irina Picker dominate the women’s A-final, touching in 25.54 (0.01 off her entry time) and almost a second ahead of the rest of the field.
The men’s equivilant saw Ilya Liner and Yuri Yurkevich cause a bit of upset as they touched out home favourites Sergey Shevstov and Andriy Govorov for 2nd and 3rd place behind 17-year-old Vladislav Bukhov, who won in 22.30. Govorov is back in action in the 50m and 100m butterfly later this week.
Liner finished 2nd in 22.51, Yurkevich downed his morning time of 23.17 to 22.65 to take 3rd, Govorov was over a second off his pb with 22.66 and Shevstov was 22.71. All these times (with the exception of Shevstov’s) are with the Olympic OST/B standard of 22.67*.
The women’s 100m breaststroke was won by Alina Tkachenko in 1:09.62, who managed to slip under the 1:10 mark she just missed this morning (1:10.03). Rostislav Krizhyansky took a considerable chunk of his morning swim of 1:03.57 to take the men’s A-final in 1:01.93 – the only swimmer sub 1:02.
The men’s 200m butterfly saw two athletes achieve the OST/B standard time; winner of the event Igor Troyanovsky was just 1.01 seconds off the A time in 1:57.47, this time lowering his previous best of 1:57.78 by 0.3. National record holder Denis Kessil also went under the B mark with 1:58.88, but is quite a bit off his personal best of 1:54.79 which he set in July last year.
The women’s 200m butterfly finished with Victoria Pavlenko in 1st with 2:15.90, Victoria Costromine in second (2:17.67) and Maria Diachenko third (2:21.96).
Daryna Zevina put on an impressive display in the women’s 200m backstroke, downing her most recent time of 2:09.85 which she set in January to 2:08.22; comfortably under the Olympic A standard of 2:10.39 and edging closer to her pb of 2:07.48.
Yet another OST/B time was achieved by Vadim Naumenko in the men’s 200m backstroke after he touched in 2:00.59. He holds the current youth record of 2:03.01 which he set in July last year. Daniel Tkachenko and Gleb Kovalenya went 2-3 in 2:02.44 and 2:06.62.
The only mid-distance event of the evening finished with Karina Snitko touching first in the women’s 400m freestyle with 4:19.41. A tight race for second resulted in Margarita Gartman just edging out Anastasia Korolchuk as she stormed down the last 50m to finish in 4:27.66. Korolchuk touched just behind her in 4:28.38.
The final individual event delivered on all fronts as Mykhailo Romanchuk posted an Olympic B qualification time 3:50.40 to take the title. His pace was too much for second place Nikita Ostapenko and bronze medal winner Bogdan Belemenko who went 3:54.63 and 3:57.92, respectively.
This evening’s final concluded with the 4×100 medley relay where the teams from the Dnipropetrovsk Region came out on top. The women comfortably took their final in 4:18.02 while the men held off the team from Kharkiv to win in 3:45.18.
*Athletes who achieve B standard times may be invited by FINA to compete at the Olympics if the quota of 878 who made the A standard is not reached.
