2023 WORLD JUNIOR SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- September 4 – 9, 2023
- Netanya, Israel
- Wingate Institute
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- How To Watch
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results
- Day 1 Prelims Live Recap | Day 1 Finals Live Recap
- Day 2 Prelims Live Recap| Day 2 Finals Live Recap
- Day 3 Prelims Live Recap | Day 3 Finals Live Recap
- Day 4 Prelims Live Recap | Day 4 Finals Live Recap
- Day 5 Prelims Live Recap | Day 5 Finals Live Recap
- Day 6 Prelims Live Recap | Day 6 Finals Live Recap
The 2023 World Junior Championships concluded tonight from Netanya, Israel, with the United States remaining atop the overall medal table.
Maintaining the lead throughout the six-day competition, Team USA wrapped up 33 total pieces of hardware, including 15 golds, 11 silvers and 7 bronze. That set the nation apart from runners-up Australia, who ended the meet with 24 medals, including 9 golds while Canada finished 3rd with 13 medals including 2 golds.
There was a 4th place tie among Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark and Ukraine with each nation leaving Netanya with 3 medals.
Maximus Williamson started the night off strong for the stars n’ stripes, hitting a new National Age Record for 17-18-year-old boys in the 100m freestyle. Williamson captured gold in a time of 48.45, capping off a stellar championships for the teen who reaped 7 golds in all.
Later in the session, it was Addison Sauickie who added another gold to the United States’ kitty, winning a tightly-packed girls’ 200m freestyle final.
Sauickie posted a mark of 1:58.09 to out-touch Canada’s Julie Brousseau who settled for silver in 1:58.10 while USA teammate Leah Hayes rounded out the top 3 in 1:58.19.
Although the girls’ medley relay for the U.S. was disqualified, the boys’ combination of Daniel Diehl, Joshua Chen, Jacob Wimberly and Williamson combined to clock a time of 3:35.98 to win the gold decisively.
The medal table looks drastically different than the 2022 edition of these championships, as the United States, Australia and Canada all did not send squads to Lima, Peru last year.
It was Japan who claimed the most hardware, while Hungary and Poland rounded out the top 3 best-performing nations. This time around, Japan fell to 9th place while Poland did not medal here and Hungary opted not to send a team.
Hungary did make a major dent in this year’s European Junior Championships, however, finishing 2nd behind Italy earlier this summer.
Off topic but nbc also waived the white flag this time in basketball explaining there loss to Canada as being short handed, guess what Americans Canada didn’t have there best players either the last 2 nba champs Andrew wiggins and Jamal Murray did not play at the World Cup. I think Canada are the favourites for gold next year at the olympics if all there nba stars show up.
Wishful thinking. If the US turns up its NBA stars, they are the favorites. Being favorites doesn’t guarantee a win, but they are the favorites.
And they are expected to turn up a lot of their stars. Basically the top players said they can’t do World Cup this year and the Olympics next year (same reason as the Canadians, probably) and there’s a big push to move it a year earlier in the cycle.
The US team should have done better with the team they had, no doubt. But Team USA only brought 3 All-Stars to the World Cup. If they can convince Embiid to come, that already makes the difference (they were getting killed on the glass – the… Read more »
There are some other glass dominant players who could help aside from Embiid (and are maybe more likely). Allen, Robinson, maybe even Bam.
I think Curry confirmed he will play in the Olympics but a lot can change in a year. If true, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few other big names step up for an opportunity to play with him. Won’t be his splash brother Klay Thompson though…he’s another person Canada could bring to the Olympics with them.
I think a very realistic starting roster would include Curry, Brown, and Tatum, which would immediately elevate the roster significantly.
The top two are actually a lot closer than I expected them to be, especially considering Southam was off.
Just an observation- no junior WRs were broken….and is there a host for the next event (next year?).
I meant individual JWRs….
There were two relay junior WRs broken and the next junior worlds isn’t due until 2025 but there’s a junior pan pacs in 2024 instead.
A lot of this years team including the trio of sprinter girls will be eligible again next year if they don’t make the Olympic team.
This time NBC didn’t even have to change the medal table criteria halfway into the meet (haha funny joke please don’t downvote me into oblivion)
I don’t love the ranking only by golds system. Countries like Italy end up ranked much lower than their performances warrant. With 12 medals, but no golds, they end up ranked 16th, below three countries with only one medal: Hong Kong, Indonesia and TaT. I prefer the approach that gives points for gold, silver, and bronze and ranks by total points. It still rewards gold medal performances by giving them more points, but doesn’t ignore silver and bronze medals.
The traditional ranking system doesn’t ignore them either, gold is just worth more than it is in a point system. I personally have no problem with the traditional system, as it somewhat balances out the playing field between bigger and smaller countries. A country with a population size of Norway or Hungary for example (two relatively small countires that usually perform quite well at the Summer Olympics) could never get ahead of any of the big dogs in a point system simply because smaller population size comes with lesser depth, which isn’t really fair if you think about it, but it also cannot be remedied.
The traditional system’s bias towards the best performance negates this unfairness; this way, if… Read more »
If a gold is worth more than infinite silvers it factually ignores them lol
To me a ranking makes sense if it gives a relatively accurate picture of how nations performed, when a country with 1 gold and nothing else is above others, Italy in this case, with 12 medals, the representation of their performance isn’t even loosely accurate
Since there is a finite amount of medals to be won, and no country will win all the golds, no it doesn’t.
What’s the point of a “ranking” where the 16th placed country is easily the 4th or 5th best performing one?
Silver and bronze are consolation medals, and handing a medal out for 2nd and 3rd place but not 4th or 5th is arbitrary and doesn’t follow any clear logic. The only clear marker of success is 1st place and, therefore, gold.
That’s absurd lol, so in your opinion Indonesia had more success than Italy? And is therefore having a better generation of junior swimmers? It’s just plain wrong
Also, every system is based on arbitrary decisions, considering first place only is one as well, the point is deciding which criteria should be arbitrarily given more importance, so, since the common understanding of what a ranking is, is to to gauge overall quality of performance your idea isn’t matching that common understanding since it values outliers over consistency.
It shouldn’t even only be about the medals, the more detailed the system is, the better, imo the right thing to do to have an appropriate level of nuisance (that accurately describes how countries… Read more »
Ok Ricky Bobby
There is no system that gives a perfect picture of the performance of each country that everyone can agree on.
If you rank golds first, it ranks countries based on the events they are the best at, while also giving some credit to the runners up. That seems like the most robust system to me, although it doesn’t aLeah’s accurately depict depth.
If you rank all medals equally, then golds are not given sufficient weight. A country with 13 bronze will rank above a country with 12 golds, and I think everyone knows that isn’t accurate. It also makes 3rd place even more arbitrary. 13 bronze is better than 12 gold, while another country that got 4th place in 25… Read more »
No system is perfect, and I never said I like the Fina one, but it’s evident that the current one is simply disproportionate, my own proposal (which doesn’t include semifinals placements, I don’t know why you brought that up) can be debated but at least tries to acknowledge both the importance of medals (all medals not just one kind) and depth, saying a gold is worth 12 times a final placement and 6 times a top 5 placement seems pretty reasonable to me, nothing to do with the Fina one, but even if you do disagree, it’s objectively more balanced then saying 1 gold is worth more than infinite silvers.
Also if this system is, like you’re saying, widely accepted… Read more »
I mentioned semifinal placements because I was referencing all of the different systems that people have proposed, not just yours.
No, your system is not “objectively” better than the current one. The current system works because it’s simple and it makes sense. A complicated points table is something that only swim nerds want to look at. If you came 8th in a final, no one cares. The vast majority of the world only cares about gold medals, and the current system reflects that. Hate it as much as you want but it’ll still be true.
I didn’t say “better” but more balanced, which is objectively true since the current system only counts golds, don’t misquote.
And “the whole world” what? It seems to me that the only ones who are actually fine with this system are the US and Australia since it doesn’t affect them negatively while keeping in the distance solid swimming nations. And since this website audience is 85% American or Aussie it’s really just an echo chamber
Also, you didn’t answer to my question, have indonesia or Hong Kong overperformed Italy in your opinion?
Ok, it’s not objectively more balanced. In your opinion it is more balanced.
What makes you think the US is fine with the current system? They would 100% prefer a points based system which would be impossible for them to lose.
Your sentence doesn’t make sense. I assume you mean to use the word “outperformed” and not “overperformed”. Yes, in my opinion they deserve to be higher on the medal table because they won an event while Italy didn’t win any events.
If you account for only 1 factor there’s literally no balancing going on.
And ok, your position is beyond absurd, there’s nothing to talk about between us
Ranking only golds is an incredibly toxic outlook on the sport. Winning is not the only thing that matters when it comes to performance. If the difference between gold and silver is 0.01 seconds, then is the silver really infinitely worse than the gold? If a hypothetical country gets silver in every single event in a competition by 0.01 seconds, how are they worse than a country that gets a single gold? That’s a ridiculous way of thinking.
Ranking golds first isn’t the “international standard” the whole saga at Worlds started because World Aquatics gave the US the best team title by weighing swims. You can look it up. Stop making disingenuous arguments.
Weighing rankings by points is a… Read more »
I doubt he’ll get it lol
Wrong. Almost no international sporting system uses a qualitative weighted ranking of points.
Tennis: you get points based on whether you win or lose. If you lose a first round match against a nobody without winning a single point, you get the same amount of points as if you played the world #1 and lost by a single point after a 5 set thriller. The only determinant of rank is matches won. The quality of the match is irrelevant.
For soccer, football and almost all international sporting events, finals are determined by a knockout competition, which again rewards only winning while the quality of the match has no impact on the outcome. Why should swimming be different?
You say… Read more »
100% correct. I can’t believe some Americans are still going on with this. It was 13 gold medals to 7. Shouldn’t even be a debate about who won the meet.
Races are about who won. Not about who came 7th and 8th.
No one here said Australia didn’t win, and the Fina points system did suck.
You clearly didn’t get what we were talking about.
You are proposing a points system that goes down to 8th place. Hence my comment that its “not about who came 7th and 8th place”. Which was what you were talking about.
That was only an idea, the point is that a single gold can’t be worth more than infinite silvers or you too are of the idea that Hong Kong’s 1 medal deserves a better ranking than Italy’s 12?
I get that you are genuinely trying to find what you believe is a better system. But any points system will favour the country that can fill the most lanes.
The USA had 43% more swimmers at Tokyo Olympics than Australia and 100% more than Canada. Over the 35 events, those extra lanes filled in finals would add up to a lot of extra points for the largest team that could mean another team who won the most gold medals would not be rated 1st. Which I disagree with.
The Gold Medal Tally can also reward smaller nations who overachieve like Bosnia and Indonesia at World Juniors by valuing their gold medals.
As I said, it was just an idea, we can only count medals (I don’t really care about 7th or 8th place either) and argue how it can be valued to make it as fair as possible, the point was that the concept that “1 gold>infinite medals who arent gold” is the most unfair way.
I’ll repeat myself for the 200th and last time, do you think it’s appropriate that Hong Kong and Indonesia were above Italy? If the answer is yes, the way we see the sport is simply irreconcilable, to me a single good performance in 1 event can’t be weighted more than showing up across the board, it kills the purpose of even trying to raise the… Read more »
Racing is about winning races (finals) = gold medals. Minor medals are secondary considerations. Indonesia won more gold than Italy so they are ranked higher.
Not sure what you mean by “since no single country will ever catch up to the US” as another country did catch up and pass the US at Fukuoka just last month using the gold medal tally as a measure.
Anyway, I think we’ve reached the point where we will just have to agree to disagree on this.
17-year-old Maximus Williamson this week…
100 Free – 48.38 👀
200 Free – 1:47.11
200 IM – 1:57.29 🤯
100 Free Split – 47.57 🥶
100 Free Split – 47.74
100 Free Split – 47.78
🥶🤯🥶🤯🥶🤯🥶🤯
Last 50 of his 2IM was the sickest swim of the meet
The price to watch live was worth every cent!
Apart from seeing TEAM USA do so well, there really were a number of ‘break out’ names who came into their own. I suspect that Maximus Williamson surprised even himself, not only with the 7 gold medals, but times that were PB’s right and left. Better known, of course, was Leah Hayes who was so powerful all the way through. For me, though, there was the consistent strength of TEAM USA in the relays from the first night forward. OK, the last women’s relay was a DSQ, but, gosh, they legitimately swam so magnificently.
I’m glad that made you feel better considering the senior team were destroyed in Fukuoka.
YES, it did! Winning has always been nice therapy for me. Ask Cate Campbell about that now. . . . .