Canadian Selection Criteria For Worlds Very Similar To Rio

2017 CANADIAN SWIMMING TRIALS

• April 6-9
• Victoria, BC
• Saanich Commonwealth Place
• Long Course (50m)
• Meet Central
• Psych Sheet
• World Championship Selection Criteria

Canada’s selection criteria for the 2017 World Championships in Budapest will be very similar to the criteria put in place to qualify for the Olympics last summer in Rio. In past years they had allowed the winner of each individual Olympic event, provided they were under the FINA ‘B’ standard, to qualify for the team. If the top-two finishers were both under the ‘A’ standard, they would both make the team. Now it is much tougher, as an ‘A’ standard and a top-two finish is required to qualify individually, in most cases.

There are five priorities for qualifying. Here’s a look at them:

1. Priority 1 – Individual Event Selection 1: All swimmers finishing first or second in an Olympic event at the Trials and achieving the FINA A Standard (Appendix A) shall be selected.
2. Priority 2 – Individual Event Selection 2: All swimmers who finished in the top 3 at the 2016 Rio Olympics in an individual event and who submit a Request for Consideration of Performance in that specific event will be considered for Discretionary Selection as per section VI of this document, up to a maximum of 2 swimmers per individual event inclusive of Priority 1.
3. Priority 3 – Freestyle Relay Selection 1: The top 4 swimmers in the 100m and 200m freestyle events shall be selected provided that the sum of their times posted in the finals at the Trials, minus 1.5 seconds, achieves the Relay Qualification Time (appendix B).
4. Priority 4 – Discretionary Selection: At the end of the Trials, the Swimming Canada High Performance Director at his sole discretion may select additional swimmers to the team.
5. Priority 5 – Individual Event Selection 3: All requests for Consideration of Performance received under Section VI will be considered, up to a maximum of 2 swimmers per individual event, inclusive of Priorities 1-4. Priority 5 shall not be used to unseat any swimmer previously nominated through Priority 1-4.

If you place top two in an Olympic event and get under the ‘A’ standard, you qualify. Priority 2 can only apply to Penny Oleksiak, Kylie Masse and Hilary Caldwell, and all are competing and shouldn’t have an issue qualifying in the events they medaled in at the Olympics, so it likely won’t have any effect on the qualification process.

As stated in Priority 3, for the free relays the add-up of the top four finishers in finals, minus 1.5 seconds, much reach the relay qualification time in order to send the top 4 finishers. Each country is permitted one entry per relay, so even if they don’t reach the relay qualifying time, they can still field a relay in Budapest made up of swimmers who qualified individually (this will be the case for the medley relays). The women are in good position to qualify the top-four from both the 100 and 200 free, while the men will be in tough to do so in either.

Priority 4 was utilized last year, as they added Taylor Ruck to the Olympic team for relays after a tough showing at Trials while battling injury. That addition ended up paying off in spades, as Ruck swam key legs on the 400 and 800 free relays that won bronze, and was utilized in all three prelim relays in order to give busier swimmers a rest.

The main different with this years selection criteria and the one used for Rio is that last year if someone was 2nd and under the ‘A’ cut they didn’t automatically qualify, they were the third priority. This year it’s an automatic qualification. There will also be no medley relay nomination, so the winner of each stroke 100 has to be under the ‘A’ standard to head to Budapest. In 2016 both Jason Block and Mack Darragh were added to the roster specifically for the medley relay after winning the 100 breast and 100 fly respectively but missing the ‘A’ standard.

Check out the full Selection Criteria document, including the time standards, here.

The meet will also be used as nomination trials for the 2017 FISU Games. You can look at the criteria for that here.