The sixth day of the Russian Swimming Championship in Kazan, which is stagging in one of the best swimming pools in the world – in the "Aquatics Palace" has come to an end. Ahead of the final day, which will give us a lot of new intrigues. And today has brought several positive results, which have already become traditional for the FINA Development Center fellows at the current Russian Olympic Swimming trials.

Today, our scholarship holders competed in the morning session of the competition in three disciplines.

The most striking performance was shown by the participants of the first preliminary heats of this day in the 100-meter butterfly:

1) Once again, we were pleased with Salvador Gordo (Angola), setting not a youth, but an adult record of the country at a distance of 100 m fly, improving the previous time by almost 1.5 seconds, as a result: 0:55.57 – and Salvador begins to prove itself at a new level.

2) According to a similar scenario, today Saddam Ramiyorzoda (Tajikistan) broke the adult national record with a time of 1:03.87, for the representative of Tajikistan this is a great progress with a difference of more than 3 seconds.

3) Also, Ishihaka Irankunda (Rwanda) showed a decent time for his country, but fell just a little short of his best time – 1:02.43.

4) Luis Vega Torres (Cuba) despite his fatigue due to the tight schedule and previous finals, he entered the 100-meter butterfly and showed a confident swim, with a strong start and a good turn on the 50-meter cutoff, but at the finish he was just a few hundredths short of his best result. Total: 0:55.05.

5) Well, the entire team of the FINA Development Center was waiting for the semifinal participation of our scholarship holder Jackson Abeku (Ghana), but in the end, less than a second was not enough to qualify – 0:54.44. In the swim, he was opposed by world-class stars, such as Andrey Minakov, Mikhail Vekovishchev and others.

The second discipline where our athletes competed was the men's 1500-meter freestyle.

1) Franci Aleksi (Albania) has already swum a long distance at this championship, and his coaching staff has correctly distributed the training process, given that Aleksi has not started at large competitions for more than a year. He managed the longest distance, swimming in 16:44.52. There is a lot of work ahead, but the Albanian swimmer will definitely cope with it.

Well, the final, and most importantly fruitful discipline for our team was the women's 800-meter freestyle.

1) Arina Baikova (Latvia) pleased us with the final swim of the 1500 meters, and now she repeated it again, swimming the 800 meters in 9:06.12, the result is not very far from her best, but it is enough to qualify for the final of the Russian Nationals. Tomorrow, April 09, we will see the Latvian athlete in action at the final evening part of the competition.

All the results of today are available here.

Head of the FINA Development Center in Kazan Ranko Tepavcevic left a small comment about results of the day:

«It has been another fantastic day for our team. I would like to congratulate to our coaches and athletes!

They have managed to set several national records and they continue their improvements ! Our team is performing with a great confidence, already 16 national records and still to come. Tomorrow is the last day of the event, we are closing it hopefully with a style and already looking forward to set our plan for the following weeks and the final preparation for the Olympics in Tokyo.

At the same time our team is growing day by day, we have welcomed today two new athletes from Uganda and more to arrive next week.

I would like to thank FINA and our partner MadWave for their continuous support. Our athletes have received the brand new racing suites that helped them to perform at high level….»

In addition to the final swim of Arina Baikova, we are waiting for the morning preliminary heats for 50 meters freestyle for men and women. 6 athletes of the FINA Development Center will compete for their personal records, as well as for entering the evening part of the Russian Olympic trials.