2020 RUSSIAN SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Sunday, October 25th – Friday, October 30th
• Aquatics Palace, Kazan, Russia
• LCM (50m)
• Olympic-qualifying competition
• SwimSwam Preview
• Day 1 Recap
• Entries/Results

Already through just two days of competition at these 2020 Russian Swimming Championships, we’ve seen one junior national record and two senior national records bit the dust here in Kazan.

15-year-old Evgenia Chikunova put on a show yesterday in the women’s 50m breast semifinal, posting a head-turning time of 30.81. That mark decimated her own previous career-quickest of 31.18 from last year, as well as overtook the Russian Junior Record of 31.00 set by Olympian Yuliya Efimova way back in 2008.

Come tonight’s final, Chikunova wasn’t able to quite replicate that same heat, but she did still wind up victorious, producing a solid time of 31.05. That cleared the field by over half a second to give the teen the gold.

In terms of the senior records churned out today, you can read more about Anton Chupkov‘s 58.83 100m breaststroke mark here, as well as Ilya Borodin‘s 1:58.00 200m IM here.

Grigory Tarasevich got on the board with a 100m back win on the men’s side, hitting a time of 53.80. As the only swimmer in the field to produce a result under the 54-second threshold, Tarasevich was able to clear the FINA ‘A’ cut of 53.85 needed for next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games.

Also making the Olympic grade was a trio of men’s 200m freestylers in Martin Malyutin, Mikhail Dovgalyuk and Alexander Shchegolev.

Malyutin sneaked ahead of the pack by only .06, getting to the wall in a time of 1:46.10 to Dovgalyuk’s 1:46.16. Shchegoler was right in the mix as well, posting 1:46.57. All three dipped under the FINA ‘A’ qualifying time of 1:47.02.

Malyutin scored the bronze last year in Gwangju, posting a time of 1:45.63 en route to tying Great Britain’s Duncan Scott at the 2019 FINA World Championships.

Finally, in the women’s 100m back, Daria Vaskina logged a winning effort of 1:00.16 to clear the Tokyo qualifying time of 1:00.25. The 18-year-old owns a lifetime best of 59.46 in this event.

Additional Notes:

• Anastasia Markova took the women’s 200m fly in a time of 2:10.87, outperforming the field by about 1 1/2 seconds.
• The women’s 100m free semifinal saw Arinan Openysheva grab the top seed in a mark of 55.16.
• Andrei Minakov was in the water twice tonight, first collecting at time of 51.70 in the 100m fly as the top seed, then as a relay swimmer for St. Petersburg. In the mixed medley relay, he helped his squad take the top prize with a split of 51.13 on the butterfly leg.