By James Sutherland on SwimSwam
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Disclaimer: Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Swim of the Week is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
Sixteen-year-old Barbara Lesniewska took on a massive program during last week’s European Junior Swimming Championships in Munich, but saved the best for last.
The Polish native won gold in the girls’ 200 IM on the final day of the competition in a time of 2:12.45, knocking nearly eight-tenths off her personal best time and pulling within 32 one-hundredths of the longstanding national record held by Katarzyna Baranowska.
Baranowska established the current Polish Record of 2:12.13 in the semi-finals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, earning her a berth in the final where she placed eighth.
In challenging that super-suited record, Lesniewska took down her previous best time of 2:13.20, set in late May at the Barcelona leg of the Mare Nostrum Tour.
Split Comparison
Baranowska, Polish Record (2008) Lesniewska, Old PB (May 2026) Lesniewska, New PB (July 2026) 28.40 28.47 28.55 1:02.24 (33.84) 1:02.15 (33.68) 1:01.20 (32.65) 1:40.88 (38.64) 1:41.44 (39.29) 1:40.94 (39.74) 2:12.13 (31.25) 2:13.20 (31.76) 2:12.45 (31.51)Lesniewksa won the final over Russians Viktoria Tarannikova (2:14.10) and Anna Rzaeva (2:14.44), with her 32.65 backstroke split being the big difference-maker.
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Lesniewksa also broke her own girls’ 15-16 Polish age group record, and becomes the 17th-fastest European junior of all-time.
The performance marked a dramatic turnaround from last year’s World Junior Championships, where she finished 18th in the 200 IM a time of 2:17.03. However, she did win gold at the European Youth Olympic Festival prior to that in the summer of 2025, setting a then-best time of 2:14.82.
In addition to her 200 IM victory in Munich, she won bronze in the girls’ 100 fly in a personal best time of 58.78 and took 5th in the 200 free (1:59.96) individually. She also had five additional swims on the Polish relays, including leading off the girls’ 4×100 free relay that finished 4th. In total, she raced 14 times during the five-day meet.
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