Junior Pan Pacific Championships, Canberra (AUS): Milla Jansen and Marcus Da Silva To Carry The Flag for Australia
Australia’s next crop of Olympic hopefuls led by Milla Jansen and Marcus Da Silva will get the chance to show off their skills when Canberra hosts the four-day Junior Pan Pacs Swim Meet starting tomorrow at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS)
It will be the first time the event has been held in Australia since its inception in Hawaii in 2005 with the event only ever hosted by Guam, Fiji and Hawaii.
Charter Nations Australia, the USA, Canada and Japan will be joined this year by teams from Korea, Micronesia, Singapore, Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga, New Zealand, Argentina and Samoa.
And who better to welcome the 300 athlete into the hub of Australian sport than Olympic legend and Australian Sports Commission (ASC) CEO Kieren Perkins OAM – who holds the Pan Pacs close to his heart – setting his first world record at the 1991 Pan Pac Meet in Edmonton – breaking the 800m world mark on the way through in the 1500m, before setting the AIS Pool alight, with two more world records in the AIS pool for 400 and 1500m the following year.
Perkins said he was delighted to welcome the next generation of swimming talent to campus.
“Events like the Junior Pan Pacs are often the first opportunity for athletes to compete in a high-performance environment and are critical to developing our young athletes,” said Perkins, who was in Paris to witness the current superstars of swimming.
“The ability for athletes to train, compete, recover and have their meals and accommodation all within walking distances makes the AIS the perfect venue for an event like this.
“Following an incredible fortnight of Olympics action, it’s exciting to think there could be some stars of tomorrow taking part in this event as they build towards LA 2028 and beyond.”
Today’s Opening Ceremony is among the first events to be held in the new look AIS Arena which only re-opened last month following a $15 million upgrade.
Two of Australia’s rising stars in Queensland freestyle rising star Milla Jansen and NSW’s budding young freestyle hope, Marcus Da Silva will carry the flag for the host country at the Opening Ceremony before the opening heats session tomorrow morning.
Jansen (Bond, QLD; Coach Chris Mooney) is one of four gold medalists from Australia’s 2023 World Junior Championship team that competed in Israel, alongside Amelia Weber (St Peters Western, QLD), Hannah Casey (Bond, QLD), and Hayley Mackinder (Griffith University, QLD).
The freestyle sprint specialist over 50 and 100m finished eighth in the star-studded 100m freestyle at the Olympic Trials, with the top seven all under the Olympic qualifying time and all returning home from Paris as Olympic gold medalists.
Milla Jansen Mian O’Leary Photo Courtesy Delly Carr (Swimmimng NSW)
Jansen’s personal best of 54.03 will make her the one to watch not just at this meet but on the countdown to 2028 with both Emma McKeon and Brianna Throssell declaring their Olympic careers are over.
While the performances of 17-year-old Da Silva (Cranbrook, NSW; Coach Bec Wheatley) caught the eye at this year’s Australian Age when the boy from Sydney won the 200m freestyle in an impressive pb 1:48.45 – also producing a strong 100m free in another pb of 49.37 on the final night.
They are among 21 Queenslanders on the team, that includes a record nine swimmers from WA, seven from NSW and three from Victoria.
There are five survivors from the 2022 Junior Pan Pacs in Hawaii along with Jansen, Casey, Weber, Da Silva and Ike Martinez (Rackley, QLD) who were also in Israel.
In team news after making the Paris Olympic team, World Junior champion and World Championship silver medalist Jaclyn Barclay has been replaced in the 40-strong Australian team by Nunawading’s Jessica Wilson, for the women’s backstroke events
2024 JUNIOR PAN PACS LIVE RESULTS