American distance phenom Luka Mijatovic closed out his 2025-26 season with a bang during the Junior Pan Pacific Championships last week in Vancouver, winning an incredible seven gold medals.
The 17-year-old won every individual freestyle event outside of the 50, sweeping the boys’ 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500-meter events while adding two more gold medals on the U.S. boys’ 4×100 and 4×200 free relays.
The headlining performance of the meet for Mijatovic came on the opening day of the meet in the 800 free, pulling away from Australia’s Lincoln Wearing on the back half of the race en route to winning gold by seven and a half seconds in a time of 7:44.52, lowering the Junior Pan Pac meet record of 7:55.16 set by Bobby Finke in 2016.
Wearing, also 17, was a distant runner-up in 7:52.04, while his Aussie teammate Luke Higgs rounded out the podium in 7:52.29.
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Courtesy of CBC Sports on YouTube
With the performance, Mijatovic broke the U.S. National Age Group Record in the boys’ 17-18 age group, lowering Luke Whitlock‘s previous mark of 7:45.19 set at the 2024 Olympic Trials.
Mijatovic also became the fastest 17-year-old of all-time, overtaking the mark of 7:45.13 set by Turkey’s Kuzey Tuncelli—who will eventually be training with Mijatovic at the University of Texas—in 2025. Italian Lorenzo Galossi was notably faster as a 16-year-old (7:43.37).
Mijatovic set a new personal best en route to victory in the 1500 free (14:57.45), moving into #5 all-time in the boys’ 17-18 age group, and despite being shy of his PBs, also won the 100 free (49.53), 200 free (1:46.04) and 400 free (3:43.67) individually.
In the relays, he anchored the U.S. boys to victory in the 4×100 free relay in 49.47 as the Americans (3:18.45) beat the Australians (3:19.44) by 99 one-hundredths of a second. In the 4×200 free relay, Mijatovic came from behind, throwing down a 1:45.44 anchor leg to give the U.S. gold (7:13.22) by more than two seconds over Japan (7:15.62).
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