Six-foot-five-inch 17-year-old Anton Jeltyakov likes to play basketball.
Luckily for his home nation of Azerbaijan, the young giant likes to swim more. He’s currently the home nation’s top medal threat in swimming at the first-ever European Games.
The Baku 2015 website profiled Jeltyakov today, with the young breaststroker talking about his love of all things athletic and his goal of being Azerbaijan’s first representative in a swimming final.
“I’m an active guy who loves to run, play table tennis and basketball, but my coach is not happy if I play basketball because he thinks I’m going to get myself injured, so I have to listen to him,” Jeltyakov joked in that interview.
The focus on swimming helped the young man make the semifinal of the 200 breaststroke earlier this week, the first Azerbaijani swimmer to make it past the heats. A rough closing 100 in the semifinals cost him as spot in the final, though, as Jeltyakov was 2:18.79 and took 13th. That’s still about a half-second faster than he was in prelims.
Today, Jeltyakov just missed the semifinals of the 50 breast, going 29.21 for 19th place. But he’s still got what he considers his best event, the 100, coming up.
If the 200 is any indicator, Jeltyakov might just have a shot at finaling in the 100. His 100 split was just ahead of the swimmer who would go on to take 8th in the 200 semis, but Jeltyakov’s splits (31.1/35.3/35.7/36.5) fell off enough to knock him out of the running. If he can hold together a 100, the lanky youngster has a real shot to give his home nation something to cheer for in a championship final.
Jeltyakov personifies the latest trend in swimming, with smaller federations and non-traditional powers starting to produce an athlete or two who can compete internationally. Azerbaijan hasn’t been internationally relevant in a long time, but the presence of young athletes with great physical potential, like Jeltyakov, gives the nation hope that it can follow in the footsteps of Lithuania or Tunisia, nations that have pushed themselves into the international spotlight with the help of one or two true breakout swimmers.
That trend goes hand-in-hand with how much more spread out swimming medals are becoming internationally. Gone are the days when federations like the U.S. or East Germany could sweep nearly all the Olympic gold medals at a single games.
In just 24 events so far, 17 different nations have earned medals in Baku, and really only Russia and Great Britain have stockpiled far more medals than the rest of the pack. With the European Games featuring only junior athletes, those results suggest that parity in swimming might continue to increase with the next generation.
As for Jeltyakov, he’ll compete Friday in the 100 breast and 4×100 medley relay, hoping to make a big step forward for the sport of swimming in Azerbaijan.