By winning the silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle at the European Championships in Paris, Andrej Barna confirmed his status as one of the fastest swimmers in the world today. The swimmer from Subotica described the result as a phenomenal achievement.
Barna produced an outstanding performance in the final, claiming silver while setting both a personal best and a new Serbian record of 21.37 seconds. He improved by seven hundredths of a second on the time he recorded at last year’s World Championships in Singapore.
Young Ukrainian swimmer Nikita Sheremet took gold, but Barna said he had no reason for disappointment.
“The impressions still haven’t fully settled, but I’m really delighted. When I came to the European Championships, I had the second-fastest time and I was thinking about a medal, but this really is a major achievement for me. When I touched the wall and saw that I was second, I was thrilled. I can’t say anything went badly in the race. I’ve never felt better in the water. I was chasing Korneev, who was next to me, and I didn’t even see the Ukrainian. In the end, 21.37 — finally a new personal best after a year. I’ve been struggling for a year to improve it, and I finally managed to do it when it mattered most. Although the season was somewhat different, with some good races and some bad ones, we’re satisfied. We know what still needs to be improved to become even faster,” Barna said.
Barna completed the most important part of his preparations for the European Championships at the City Olympic Pool in Banja Luka, where, as he said, he had excellent training conditions.
“Banja Luka really helped me a lot, as did Miodrag Čeko and everyone there. I really enjoyed training there. It’s a fast pool and I like it very much, so I’ll definitely come back. I’m discussing with Čeko the possibility of swimming at the US Open under the Olimp cap. We’re currently in talks about that. I enjoy Banja Luka every time I come and it helped me tremendously ahead of these European Championships,” he added.
Speaking to RTRS, Barna emphasized that he is already thinking about his next challenges, particularly the World Championships, which will be held in Budapest next year.
“Although this is a good time, I don’t know whether it will be enough for a medal next year in Budapest. Medals are usually somewhere around 21.2 or 21.3, but I don’t want to gamble. I want to bring this down to 21.10. We’ve already analyzed the race and divided it into different segments. The swimming itself was phenomenal, and both my coach and I are extremely satisfied with that, but we need to improve the first 15 meters. The start is good, the reaction is good, but I lose some speed underwater and when coming out of the underwater phase. We’ll try to install some underwater cameras and record it to see how we can shave another tenth of a second off that segment of the race,” Barna said.
Andrej Barna is currently resting on the Croatian island of Hvar, where he is recharging his batteries ahead of his next competitions.
“It’s beautiful here. We’ve just arrived and we’re heading to a new hotel in the town of Hvar. A well-deserved break is next, and then it’s back to the pool,” Barna concluded.
Source: RTRS
