Tatarstan wins three bronze medals at the Russian Swimming Cup in Kazan

Three medals from Aquatika, Delta and Yubileiny

Albert Rakhimov, coach of Aquatika sports school, told us about the 15-year-old hero of the National Cup, Anastasia Chernyshova, back in the winter: “Our first recruitment was a kind of hodgepodge of all those wishing to go in for swimming from 7 to 14 years, mainly from Aviastroitelny District of Kazan, forming training groups from them. Now we have someone to be proud of. Anastasia Kolpakova (coached by Gulsia Zaripova) became the champion of Russia in relay. Olga Popova has a new star, Anastasia Chernysheva, who became a medallist of the national championships.” Regarding Yaroslav Sokolovsky, his native swimming school Yubileiny in Menzelinsk and his first coach Nail Kayumov, as well as Delta school, which Sokolovsky now represents, made a great contribution to the growth of this athlete. Sokolovsky's medal is also very important in that he came in third after two bearded favourites of Russian swimming, Ilya Borodin and Maxim Stupin.

Just as football and hockey players often consider hits to the goalposts as potential missed goals after their matches, in these results it is worth noting that three medals in Kazan were won by a student of the Kazan swimming school, Renata Gainullina. Two silver medals in the 100 and 200 meters backstroke, and in the 100 meters she finished behind Milana Stepanova by a fingernail-length touch. It is curious that Renata's gap to the winner of the 50 meters, Alina Gaifutdinova, was greater than in the 100 meters, where she again lost to Milana Stepanova.

DPR athlete starts in final swim

Alina Artamonova, a representative of the Donetsk People's Republic, competed in the 200m backstroke final. The small DPR team is supported by a large part of the country's swimming world: Volgograd, Yekaterinburg and Penza. As a result, Artamonova finished first in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk at one of the stages of the selection for the Russian Cup final, and entered the top eight in Kazan.

In addition, spin swimmer Nikolai Zuyev, who until recently represented Tatarstan and the Sintez sports club in the all-Russian arena, came in second in 200 and third in 100 metres. By the way, Zuev's return to the Komi Republic team weakened the Tatarstan relay teams, both combined and mixed, despite the fact that there are no strong relay teams in Zuyev's native region. During the days of the Russian Cup in Kazan, the traditional 61st Seven Hills international swimming tournament started in Rome, which was once the fourth stage of the legendary Mare Nostrum series.

Leaders of the Russian national team chose to start in Italy

Ivan Kozhakin, Kliment Kolesnikov, Yegor Kornev, Miron Lifintsev, Pavel Samusenko and Tatarstan Andrey Minakov preferred to test others, see and show themselves in the capital of Italy. Often it looked like a match meeting of the Italian and Russian national teams with competition from some athletes from Greece, Serbia, Switzerland. The thought arose that over the past three years, from 2022 to the present, the Olympic starts in Paris and three world championships have taken place, after which the swimming Olympus has changed significantly. Firstly, it is worth paying attention to Asian swimmers, since the World Championships will be held in their homeland. Although Russian swimmers are generally accustomed to starting during the day according to European time, since this is the time of qualifying starts, nevertheless, the latest major starts (the Olympics in Tokyo, the World Championships in Gwangju, Fukuoka and Doha) demonstrate that home walls and the time zone can act as trump cards for Asians. In addition to other advantages.

For example, the Chinese Qin Haiyan won all the gold in breaststroke at the World Championships in Fukuoka (50, 100, 200 metres), but then he finished both the World Championships in Doha and Paris without personal awards. But in Paris he had to take a huge number of tests per day for doping control, which affected his psychological and physical condition.

When there is one Macintosh and three world records

It is noteworthy that the confrontation in the pool is recorded only between representatives of the stronger sex, although in women's swimming Australia and China are among the favourites, competing fiercely. But even Ye Shiwen, who showed mind-blowing seconds at the 2012 London Olympics, did not cause such discontent among Australians as her compatriots. Most likely, now every stroke of Pan Zhanle, who showed a cosmic result in the 100m freestyle in the Paris pool, breaking away from the second prize winner by more than a second, will be studied by specialists under a microscope.

For the Anglo-Saxons, the Chinese represent a country that they do not trust from the start. They trust Summer Mackintosh, because she is from Canada. Another girl with whom our swimmers have yet to meet in a face-to-face confrontation. Although she competed at the age of less than 15 at the Tokyo Olympics, the last major international competition for the Russians. Mackintosh, who became the youngest in the entire Canadian Olympic delegation, finished in fourth place twice, but in the following four years she made a huge step to become one of the greatest swimmers in history.

In June 2025, at the national selection for the World Championship, she set new world records in three disciplines. The last person to break three world records in one competition before McIntosh was Michael Phelps at the 2008 Olympics. Another swimmer whose records are not in doubt, since he represented the United States. Regarding McIntosh, she updated the world records in 400m freestyle, 200 and 400m individual medley. Moreover, if she had started at the Russian Cup in Kazan in the 300m individual medley, she would have wiped the floor with our Yaroslav Sokolovsky, and brought more than a body weight to Dmitry Balandin. There is no doubt that the Canadian is ahead of the members of the Tatarstan team due to her own skill and willpower. The first swimming star from a country washed by the Atlantic Ocean, Portuguese Diogo Ribeiro, two-time world champion in butterfly, backstroke swimmer Roman Mityukov from Switzerland, Olympic and world championship medallist, Englishman Daniel Whiffren, who swims long-distance freestyle swimmer under the Irish flag, and finally, freestyle superstar David Popovici from Romania, whom Kazan swimming fans got to know at the 2021 Junior European Short Course Championships. Here are the new stars who have risen to the Pantheon of world swimming while the Russians were absent.

It turns out that breaststrokers can combine different styles

We can expect the return to the competitive process of Tunisian Ahmed Hafnaoui, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic champion in 400m freestyle, who missed the Paris Olympics due to friction with the Tunisian Swimming Federation. Two curious phenomena are Leon Marchand from France and Siobhan Haughey from Hong Kong. The former shocked the swimming world by winning Olympic gold medals in butterfly and breaststroke in one day. As for Haughey, she has a world bronze in breaststroke and a silver in freestyle, plus the athlete from Hong Kong will be competing in her usual time zone.

Among the Americans, one should pay attention to Gretchen Walsh, the younger sister of Alexandra Walsh, who became the world record holder in the 100-meter butterfly. If we continue the theme of sports dynasties, we can note Katherine Berkoff, an Olympic and world championship medallist, the daughter of four-time Olympic medallist David Berkoff, who changed the rules of this swimming discipline with his style of passing the beginning of the distance on the back. Plus Lana Pudar from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who specializes in butterfly. She also competed at the Kazan European Junior Championships, having already established herself. And sports fans may know her father, football goalkeeper Velibor Pudar. Incidentally, he was a teammate of our Alexey Prudnikov, the 1988 Seoul Olympic champion, although, rather, a competitor, since both were goalkeepers.