2024 World Aquatics Championships
The qualifying round for the 2024 World Aquatics Championships was hit by some major misfires.
Despite a thin field that should have allowed top names to advance to the semi-finals, both the defending world champion and the latest world record holder failed to advance to the semi-finals.
Lithuania in women’s 100m breaststroke Ruta Meiltite He finished 17th in 1:07.79. According to SwimRankings.net’s database, Meiltite has surpassed that swim 69 times in her career, including the finals of her two World Cup events last year and various mid-season events. there is.
The timing of this meet is a bit strange since she rarely races in February (she hasn’t swum the 100m breaststroke in February since 2010 when she was 12 years old), but she He is the defending world champion in both 50 meters. She is a former world record holder in the 100m breaststroke and 100m breaststroke.
She was not the only world record holder to miss her second swim on Monday.Another, and perhaps more shocking, is that China’s Pan Zanreachieved an astonishing 38th place in the men’s 200 free qualifying with a time of 1:51.03.
Pan’s swim is even more amazing considering that about 14 hours earlier he broke the world record in the 100 freestyle by swimming a score of 46.80.
Not all 100 freestylers can successfully swim 200 freestyles, but Pan was part of a new generation of swimmers who could, along with the swimmers who broke David Popovich’s record.
Pan’s best time was 1:44.65 in the 200m free at last year’s Chinese Championships, and she was a silver medalist at the Asian Games.
However, bread is becoming less and less professional at events. Early in his career, he was a long-distance swimmer. He only ran the long course 1500m free when he was 14 years old, when he swam 15:33.48, and last May in the 800m free he swam 7:59.15.
At this meet, he entered the 50 free, so perhaps we’ll see an evolution of this changed focus later in the meet. Still, an improvement of 6.5 seconds in 10 months is an impressive result in a competition where Pan is clearly performing close to his peak despite changing his training focus.
Other notable non-qualifiers Monday morning:
- Australia continues to search for a solution, Plan A and Plan B for the breaststroke section of the women’s medley relay. abby harkin In the 100 chest heats, he finished 25th in 1:09.01. Despite her injury, Harkin swam both the qualifying and final rounds of Australia’s medley relay at last year’s world championships, beating American winner Lily King by more than two seconds, with the Americans winning by 1.3 seconds. . Harkin was put on the disabled list when she underwent surgery on her knee late last year, so perhaps her latest swim is something of a check-in for her.
- 19 years old Kusaweri Masiuk The Polish athlete finished 17th in the men’s 100 backstroke with a score of 54.33, missing out on a place in the semifinals by 10 seconds. He is the 2022 World Junior Champion in this event and was sixth at last year’s World Championships. He is at the forefront of a coveted new generation of backstrokers rising through the ranks. While the 100 backstroke is not expected to be one of the marquee races of the Olympics, the fields at these world championships are, at least, fairly deep, with 11 people reaching within 54 seconds.british luke greenbank He also missed the mark and finished in 23rd place with a score of 54.93.