By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam
Swimming Canada announced it will update its selection policies for the 2025 World Aquatics Championships as a result of last week’s news that the LA 2028 Games will add stroke 50s to the Olympic program.
“World Aquatics putting the information out that they are adding the 50 butterfly, backstroke, and breaststroke for men and women means six more medal events. It’s a great addition into the Los Angeles 2028 Games program,” said High Performance Director and National Coach John Atkinson. “It’s something that had been rumoured that was going to be happening, so we thank World Aquatics for providing clarity with an official announcement. Anything that increases the number of medals for swimming at the Olympic Games is a positive addition to the program.”
Swimming Canada Consideration Times for Stroke 50s
Women Men Swimming Canada Secondary Standard AQUA “A” Event AQUA “A” Swimming Canada Secondary Standard 28.50 28.22 50 Backstroke 25.11 25.36 31.06 30.75 50 Breaststroke 27.33 27.60 26.49 26.23 50 Butterfly 23.36 23.59How difficult will Swimming Canada’s Secondary Standards be for the swimmers to hit?
Obviously, it depends on the event. But, based on Swimming Canada’s all-time rankings in the event, it looks like the most difficult—or at least, the events with the fewest swimmers under the standard—will be the men’s backstroke and breaststroke. In both the 50 backstroke and breaststroke, only four Canadian men have been under the secondary standard. In the backstroke, it’s Javier Acevedo, Russell Wood, Sebastian Somerset, and Pascal Wollach, with Benjamin Loewen just two-hundredths away. The breaststroke is led by Scott Dickens, followed by Gabe Mastromatteo, James Dergousoff, and Richard Funk.
It gets better in the men’s 50 butterfly as six men have been under the standard, led by the current Canadian men’s rosters stars Finlay Knox, Josh Liendo, and Ilya Kharun. Meanwhile, eight women have been under the standard in the 50 breaststroke and butterfly, and 15 women in Canada’s history have cleared the 50 backstroke standard, highlighting the discipline as a national strength.
Of course, it’s expected that putting the stroke 50s on the program will bring a new wave of focus on the events, which could explode the numbers under these standards in the coming years.
This year’s Canadian Swimming Trials take place from June 7-12 in Victoria. That gave Swimming Canada plenty of time to make changes to its selection procedures, unlike Aquatics GB, which had about a week’s notice from the World Aquatics announcement to the start of the ongoing Aquatics GB Swimming Championships, which is the British qualification meet for the 2025 World Aquatics Championships. In London, there are no consideration times for the stroke 50s, which will surely be updated in the future to reflect the sport’s major shift towards sprinting.
Over the past couple of years, Swimming Canada has moved its trials for the year’s senior international meet back. The 2022 and 2023 trials for the World Championships were the first weekend in April, with the 2023 dates running from March 28-April 2. Last year, the Olympic Trials ran May 13-19, more than a month later than the 2023 Trials. Now, Swimming Canada has pushed its selection meet back by almost another month.
In addition to these changes, Swimming Canada announced it has amended the Sport Canada Athlete Assistance Program to include the stroke 50s, “’similar to when the men’s 800 and women’s 1500-m events were added for the Tokyo 2020 program.’” Similarly, the organization is reviewing its selection policies for the World Junior Championships.
However, Swimming Canada is waiting to make any announcements about its Olympic selection procedures, with overall participant numbers a major factor in the decision.
“The information that is still not yet known in all of this is, will the number of athletes in swimming at the Olympic Games increase, or remain the same,” Atkinson said. “They have to look at the process of how Olympic qualifying times, relay-only athletes, universality qualifiers and Olympic consideration times are allocated. That all has to meet the total number of athlete slots available at the Olympic Games. For Paris 2024 it was 872. Once that number is known and the pathway is known, we’ll know how all of this will piece together like a good jigsaw does, and what we have to work towards in the end.”
Pieces of that puzzle began to fall into place this week when the IOC announced Aquatics would maintain the 1,370 athlete quota from Paris 2024 to LA 2028. That count includes swimming, open water swimming, diving, water polo, and artistic swimming, so it’s still not official as to if 872 will remain the swimming maximum for LA.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Swimming Canada Updates 2025 Worlds Selection Policies To Include Stroke 50 Consideration Cuts
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Swimming Canada Updates 2025 Worlds Selection Policies To Include Stroke 50 Consideration Cuts )
Also on site :
- All the Essentials: West Ham United vs. Southampton
- All to know about Lecce vs. Como : prediction, team news, lineups and live Info.
- Phoenix Suns’ Kevin Durant, Devin Booker still in upper echelon on NBA player rankings