The dates for the 2017 Georgina Hope Foundation Australian Age Swimming Championships have been set at Sunday, April 16th through Sunday, April 23rd, and now the qualification times have also been released.
The multi-state event is set to be held at the Sleeman Sports Complex in Brisbane, Queensland, with swimmers needing to have achieved the qualification times after May 1, 2016. As in the past, the age groups are segmented into the following for each boys and girls: 12/13, 14, 15, 16, 17/18.
The 2016 version of this event incorporated the selection trials for the 2016 Oceania Championships and 2016 Junior Pan Pacific Championships. Although the selection criteria has not yet been published, it’s likely the 2017 Australian Age Swimming Championships will serve as the qualification meet for the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games to be held in the Bahamas next July.
Below are the qualification times for 2017 (left) compared to 2016 (right) for both girls and boys across all ages for the Aussie Age Swimming Championships. When comparing the two tables for girls, all of the times for 2017 are faster, save for the 17/18 800m freestyle. That qualification time remained the same between 2016 and 2017 at 9:10.00. Of note, the same age group’s 100m freestyle QT has now dipped beneath the minute mark at 59.80, whereby last year’s mark was set at 1:00.00 flat.
For the boys, all times are faster from 2016 to 2017. For the 17/18 age group, for example, the 100m butterfly qualification time is now into the 58-second territory (58.80), whereas last year it stood at 59.00. That same age segment’s 200m backstroke time also now sits at 2:12.60, whereas last year 2:13.00 got a swimmer into the meet.
2017 Qualification Times (Girls) 2016 Qualification Times (Girls)
2017 Qualification Times (Boys)
