July 9th meant another good day at the 2nd FINA World Junior Swimming Championships. Three Championships records – out of five events contested - were set already in the preliminaries: New Zealand’s Daniel Bell (1990), who is poised to win the 100m backstroke and will possibly end-up as one of the most prominent swimmers of the meet, was the fastest qualifier in the 100m butterfly with 53.73; Japan’s Natsuki Akiyama (1991) was on top of the women’s 200m butterfly ranks with 2:09.69, just 0.40 seconds faster than her compatriot Yui Miyamoto, who, before Akiyama, had also set a short lived Championships record, in a time of 2:10.09; Robert Bale (1990), of Great Britain topped the men’s 200m freestyle qualifiers with 1:50.23, ahead of yesterday’s 400m freestyle gold and silver medallists, respectively Danila Izotov (RUS, 1991) and Alex Di Giorgio (ITA, 1990).

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Exactly thirty days prior to the inauguration of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the second edition of the FINA World Junior Championships got underway today in the indoor swimming complex of UANL, Monterrey’s major university.

The meet, organised by both the Mexican Swimming Federation, headed by Javier Careaga, and FINA, spreads over six days, instead of five which characterised the inaugural edition two years ago in 2006, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was found that the programme there was too squeezed, and FINA has decided to add one more day to the competition which has attracted about 600 swimmers from 66 countries. Among the most numerous delegations are those of the host country Mexico and of the neighbouring United States of America.

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