Zmushka Nails Belarusian 100 Breast Record Ahead Of Paris Olympics

2024 BELARUS OPEN CUP

• July 10th – July 13th
• Brest, Belarus
• LCM (50m)
• Results

With the 2024 Olympic Games on the horizon, Belarusian swimmers competed on domestic soil at the Open Cup that concluded tonight from Brest.

One of the event’s highlights came in the women’s 100m breaststroke, where 27-year-old Alina Zmushka fired off a new national record en route to grabbing gold.

Zmushka registered a time of 1:06.20 during the semi-finals of the 100m breast. That represented a new lifetime best for the veteran, erasing her previous career-quickest outing of 1:06.44 from last year’s Russian Championships. That former effort also represents the Belarusian national standard.

Zmushka opened at 31.95 and closed at 34.25 to produce the new Belarusian record.

She was much slower in the final, checking in at 1:07.52 but that still beat the field by over 5 seconds.

Zmushka already owns the Belarusian record in the 50m breast (30.43) and 200m breast (2:24.14).

The nations of Russia and Belarus have been formally barred from the 2024 Olympic Games after the countries collaborated on a 2022 invasion of neighboring Ukraine that has so far caused hundreds of thousands of casualties.

However, Zmushka and teammates Ilya Shymanovich and Anastasiya Shkurdai are listed as “eligible and invited athletes” with a Belarusian passport as neutral athletes. You can read more about their situation here.