Munich 2026: Wealthy expertise gathering for European Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships on the 1972 Olympic pool

The Olympic pool created for the Munich 1972 Games will teem with expertise this week as Germany hosts its first European Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships for 40 years.

A complete of 599 athletes are set to compete on the 52^nd staging of this occasion, which can begin on Tuesday July 7 and conclude on Sunday July 12.

And the entry checklist boasts a wealth of defending champions clearly heading for the heights of the game.

For many these Championships can be a significant step in the direction of the principle occasion of the summer time, the European Aquatics Championships Paris 2026, which get underway on July 31 with swimming scheduled to happen within the Olympic Aquatics Centre from August 10 to 16.

Lithuania can be trying as soon as once more to the prodigious expertise of 17-year-old Tajus Juska, who received 50m freestyle and 100m butterfly gold finally yr’s Samorin version on the outside pool inside Slovakia’s Olympic coaching centre.

Juska, who additionally received the world junior 100m butterfly title final yr, is searching for gold for a 3rd consecutive version of those Championships having received the 100m freestyle in his native Vilnius in 2024.

In Samorin he collected 100m freestyle silver behind Spain’s Luca Hoek, whom he beat to the 50m freestyle title. That private rivalry is because of play out as soon as once more in Munich.

Meanwhile Great Britain – who topped the medals desk final yr with a complete of 19 together with 9 golds – in the meantime, may have excessive hopes that 16-year-old Amalie Smith can obtain the identical ranges of success she did in Samorin, the place she earned breakthrough victories within the 200m and 400m particular person medley.

Britain may even maintain expectations for Dean Fearn, who will defend the 50m butterfly title he received final yr earlier than including the world title in the identical occasion.

Other defending champions concerned will embody Austria’s Christian Giefing within the males’s 200m freestyle, Spain’s David Antal within the 200m butterfly and impartial athlete Gregorii Vekovishchev within the 400m freestyle.

Vekovishchev’s team-mate Sofia Diakova will defend her 400m and 800m freestyle titles, whereas different returning ladies’s champions embody Italy’s Bianca Nannucci within the 200m freestyle, Romania’s Daria Silisteaunu within the 100m backstroke and Flawia Kamzol of Poland within the 50m butterfly.

The hosts may have 37 swimmers competing, a complete solely bettered by Italy who’ve 40 representatives, and the Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) who will quantity 39.

France are subsequent after Germany with 31 swimmers, adopted by Spain, Great Britain and Poland on 24, Turkiye on 21 and Hungary on 20.

AIN completed second general in 2025 with 5 golds from a complete of 13, adopted by Italy after which Spain, each of whom earned 4 golds of their complete of 14 medals.

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics