By Sharon Robb
BUDAPEST, Hungary, August 24, 2019—Apostolos Papastamos of Greece broke the world junior and championship records in the 400-meter individual medley on Day Five of the 7th FINA World Junior Championships Saturday at state-of-the-art Duna Arena.
Papastamos dominated the field and dropped eight seconds from his prelim time to win in 4:11.93. It was also a Greek national record breaking the previous mark of 4:14.41.
The U.S. won its first gold medal in the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay in 3:37.61 with Gretchen Walsh, Torri Huske, Grace Cooper and Amy Tang. The time was just a second-and-a-half off the world junior and championship record.
Other individual winners:
Aussie teenager Lani Pallister, 17, won the 1500-meter freestyle in a championship record 15:58.86. She won the mile by 16 seconds and completed her hat trick after also winning the 400- and 800-meter freestyles.
Italian Thomas Ceccon won his second gold medal in the 50-meter butterfly in 23.27 just ahead of Russian Andrei Minakov in 23.29.
Australia won its second gold of the night with Bronte Job in the 50-meter backstroke in 27.87. Jade Hannah of Canada and Daria Vaskina of Russia tied for the silver in 27.91.
Florida Gold Coast past and present swimmers:
7. Izaak Bastian, Bahamas, St. Andrew’s, Florida State, 50-meter breaststroke, 28.25/semifinals, 9. 28.39, reserve.
19. Jamaica, women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay, 4:00.09, Zaneta Alvaranga, Sabrina Lyn, Gaby Banks, Emily MacDonald.
35. Gaby Banks, Jamaica, Cypress Bay/SOFLO, 50-meter freestyle, 26.87.
78. Luis Bucaro, Guatemala, Cypress Bay/TS Aquatics, 100-meter freestyle, 54.59.
86. Nicolas Vale, Jamaica, Pine Crest Swimming, 100-meter freestyle, 55.40.
“My swims this meet haven’t been great, but I have learned a lot from Junior Worlds, seeing all these fast people swim and all these fast times and how difficult it is to make it to semi-finals and finals,” Vale said.
“It definitely motivates me more to train harder and work more on my details and my techniques and based on what I have learned from the faster swimmers, there are details in my stroke that I can work on.
Around 800 young promising swimmers ages between 15-17 (women) 14-18 (men) are competing in the six-day competition, which has produced many of today’s swimming stars.
A total of 125 National Federations are represented at Duna Arena, the venue that staged the 17th FINA World Championships in July 2017 and has been the background to many FINA high-profile competitions since then such as the FINA Champions Swim Series and Swimming World Cup.
Daily heat sessions are at 9:30 a.m while semifinals and finals are at 5:30 p.m. The championships end Sunday.
All sessions are being live streamed on FINAtv and daily news reports will be available on FINA website. Results are available immediately after each event on FINA website and on FINA mobile app.
Sharon Robb can be reached at sha11cats@aol.com
http://www.swim4soflo.com
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