FINA has implemented a new international competition, this time for the 13-15 age group: the FINA Youth World Championships. The first edition will be held August  28 – September 1 in Šamorin, Slovakia, in the same pool that hosted the fourth leg of the FINA World Series last season.

The competition will happen at the outdoors venue ‘X-Bionic Sphere’, and swimmers born in 2004, 2005 and 2006 are eligible. The events will be figures, free solo, free duet, free mixed duet, free team and free combination. Like in every competition in this age group, figures scores and routines scores will be combined to determine the final rankings in every event except in the free combination (100% routine score).

Tentative schedule is below, with times left to be determined:

Excitingly, mixed duets will be included for the first time ever in a major international competition for this age group. Mixed duets were included in the junior category for the first time at the junior Europeans and junior world championships in 2018, so this new competition for this younger category will be excellent for us fans to discover the new up-and-coming talents.

The host nation actually has had a young mixed duet – siblings Silvia Solymosyová and Jozef Solymosy – competing and also serving as pre-swimmers in major European and world championships these last few years. Silvia is now in the junior category, but Jozef fits right in this age group so this will hopefully finally be his time to shine.

The full information bulletin about the 2019 FINA Youth World Championships is available here. The official website is here.

Article by Christina Marmet