Dubai: Australia and Russia continued their tussle for top spot on the penultimate day of the 4th Fina World Junior Swimming Championships at the Hamdan Sports Complex on Friday morning.
Fresh from his sensational gold in the 50m freestyle on Thursday night, Australia’s Luke Percy was the fastest to qualify in the boys’ 100m freestyle in a time of 49.33. And, once again, he had the measure of both his main challengers in the 50m — Caeleb Dressel of the US, who qualified second, and Evgeny Sedov, who touched in seventh, while Percy’s teammate Regan Leong qualified third for the semi-finals.
The Russian charge was led by Svetlana Chimrova in the girls’ 100m Butterfly as she qualified fastest with a time of 59.30 seconds.
Chimrova, who took gold in the 50m butterfly in a championship record on Thursday, was followed by Australian Jemma Schlicht while Hungary’s Liliana Szilagyi came in third. Szilagyi is still chasing the gold she promised she would win in honour of her grandfather, a three-time water polo Olympian, who passed away last week.
Canadian Luke Reilly managed to push Russia into second on the qualifiers list in the boys’ 400m individual medley, finishing in 4:20.15 leaving Russia’s Semen Makovich with the second fastest time and Japan’s Keita Sunama in third.
Russia were back on top in the next event, the girls’ 50m freestyle, with Rozaliya Nasretdinova qualifying in 25.28 and the aching Ruta Meilutyte of Lithuania finishing in 25.36 in front of Australia’s Shayna Jack.
The Russian and Australian domination of the top three qualifying spots was broken in the boys’ 50m breaststroke, with Slovenia’s Peter Stevens breaking the championship record with a time of 27.74 to qualify first for the semi-finals.
The girls’ 4x100 freestyle relay heats again saw Australia qualify first in 3:44.56, followed by the USA in 3:45.09 and Russia in 3:45.09.
After four days of competition, Australia were leading the medal table with eight golds, followed by Russia with six and the USA with five.
However, USA remained in the overall lead with 18 medals, with Russia in second with 15 and Australia third with 13.
Saturday is the final day of the competition and the heats will be held from 10am to 1pm followed by the last 11 finals starting at 6pm.
