The Japanese Swimming Federation (JASF) has revealed the plan for its first competition back from coronavirus lockdown.
The 43rd National Junior Olympic Cup, which hosts junior high school and high school swimmers across 47 prefectures, is typically held in one central location in a traditional format. However, with social distancing and other coronavirus-related restrictions in place, the JASF will hold the competition over a series of weeks, with each prefecture hosting its own edition of the competition.
Dates for the various local competitions will span Saturday, July 18th through Wednesday, September 30th. As in the past, swimmers are broken into age groups of 10 and under, 11-12, 13-14, 15-16, and ‘championship’, with age determined as of August 22nd of this year.
When all competitions have been conducted, times performed across the 47 prefectures will be ranked virtually and qualifying times for additional national meets will be validated.
Additionally, protocols pertaining to the previously published document by JASF on holding domestic competitions in light of coronavirus can be found in our report here.
Japan’s plan for these prefectural competitions is akin to what we revealed Italy is also about to undertake. The Italian Swimming Federation (Federnuoto) has announced that the Italian Junior Championships will take place from July 20th – August 8th. The championship will be held at various regional locations in order to comply with social distancing regulations, with Regional Committees overseeing the entire event.
