2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES
- Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
- Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
- La Défense Arena — Paris, France
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Full Schedule
- SwimSwam Preview Index
Sophie Kaufman contributed to this report.
Initial entries for the Olympic (pool) swimming events have been released, which means it’s time to analyze. And it’s easy this time!
A decade of prayers have been answered. The Olympic entries were published in a .xls format.
It’s the little things that keep us motivated over here…#swimming
— Braden Keith (@Braden_Keith) July 12, 2024
Over on Instagram, Swimming Stats has already started breaking down the number of entries per event:
View this post on Instagram
Now, we’re going a step further to dig into how athletes qualified for those events. Earlier this year, World Aquatics warned that the athlete quota might result in B cuts not earning qualification.
In the end, there were 37 entries from B cuts, over eight times fewer than the number of universality entrants (304), which in turn is just under half the number of entries that qualified outright with an A cut (609).
The number of universality entrants tapers off dramatically as the distance increases. The women’s 50 freestyle has the highest number with 55, compared to only 24 athletes under the A cut of 24.70. The women’s 50 is also tied for the event with the most entries; the other one is the men’s 100 free with 79 entries.
For nations only sending swimmers under the universality rules, it makes sense that they’d gravitate towards the shorter freestyle races.
On the other end of the spectrum, the most technically complex race (the 400 IM, which requires ability in all four strokes) has no universality entrants across both the men’s and women’s events. Barring scratches, only 16 men and 16 women will race the 400 IM in Paris. That’s the lowest number of entries across all events.
Four of the five least-entered events are 400 meters or greater, meaning it’s unlikely we’ll see a similar situation to Tokyo where everyone who swam the prelims of the women’s 200 butterfly earned a second swim. There are still only 19 entrants in the women’s 200 fly, the fewest of the events with semifinals, but that’s two more than were on the psych sheets three years ago.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. leads the way with the maximum 56 individual entries. Australia is close behind, with 53 entries. The Aussies are just missing second entrants in the men’s 200 fly, men’s 1500, and women’s 100 breast.
The U.S. also has the most top seeds across all events (8), as well as the most in women’s events. For the men’s events, Chinese swimmers have the most top seeds with four.
| Top Seed (Men) | Top Seed (Women) | Total | |
| USA | 1500 Free, 100 Back | 800 Free, 1500 Free, 100 Back, 200 Breast, 100 Fly, 200 IM | 8 |
| Australia | 50 Free, 800 Free | 200 Free, 400 Free, 200 Back | 5 |
| China | 100 Free, 100 Breast, 200 Breast, 200 IM | 100 Breast | 5 |
| Canada | 100 Fly | 200 Fly, 400 IM | 3 |
| France | 200 Fly, 400 IM | 2 | |
| Germany | 400 Free | – | 1 |
| Hong Kong | – | 100 Free | 1 |
| Hungary | 200 Back | – | 1 |
| Romania | 200 Free | – | 1 |
| Sweden | – | 50 Free | 1 |
If races were won on psych sheets, the U.S. would walk away from Paris atop the medal table after the individual events. But it’s not as simple as that.
- Want to know who SwimSwam thinks will win gold? Check out our event-by-event previews.
- Think you know better? Test your skills in our pick’em contest.
Soon, the Olympics kick off, and we’ll have our answers. For now, we’ll have to be content with speculation.
Why is there such a massive discrepancy between the number of entrants for the women’s (29) vs men’s (79) 100 freestyle?
Hahahaha, every female and male qualify for the 400 IM semis/finals.
Haha 400+ don’t have semifinals.
How did Destin Lasco, Gabe Jett, and Trenton Julian qualify? Oh wait
Will ten lanes be utilized for the heats?
I don’t think you’re eligible for records when there are ten lanes. Someone mentioned this in a comment during US Team Trials.
37 entries from B cuts… This number included ‘B’ entries from swimmers who already they have other ‘A’ qualification (e.g. MSH added 400 free, two Hong Kong swimmers added 1 event each).
Do we have stats of how many swimmers actually got invited as B cut swimmer?
Who is the top seed in women 200 fly? Because that’s missing from the list. Regan Smith or Summer?
summer is
World Aquatics has a qualification ranking page. Times done at non designated meets can’t be used as seed times.
I don’t know if the term “affirmative action” is applicable when it comes to Olympic swimming, but WHY (I think I know already) not give swimming slots to competent men and women who have decent times, i.e., “B” cuts? Rather, these are tossed out to swimmers who — frankly — seem to be motivated as much by the “vanity moment” of appearing in the Olympics rather than actually GROWING the the sport in their respective countries. I would LOVE for someone to do a study of how these “wasted” slots – over time — really grow the sport, or not. . . .
The real answer is that it keeps administrators from those countries engaged and gives them an excuse to go to the Olympics. Remember that every country in swimming gets a vote.
I think universality programs are great, and IMO the investments World Aquatics is making to grow the sport around the world is probably the best thing they’ve done – now or ever.
I do think there should be a cap of some kind. Like maybe there are only 200 Universality spots before you go to B times, and the other ~150 countries that don’t have qualifying swimmers contend for those 200 spots. I would think about how to add a caveat that if your best swimmer has a “B”… Read more »
Also many of the 37 B cuts entries are either universality athletes (higher priority than B cut, like Morales (PUR), A cut athletes or originally from relay-only (e.g., Reitshammer (AUT). I think there are only 4 truly B cuts invited athletes, that gets to Paris as a priority four quota. They should be Saka (TUR) (200 IM), Gan (SGP) (1500), and Vall (200 breast), Cabanes (200 fly), both from ESP. World Aquatics also seem to have prioritized inviting B cuts athletes in events that have less entrants, not according to the highest WA points swims which was on the original plan.
Relay only swimmers don’t get B cut bonus swims. We asked that.
I mean for Reitshammer (AUT) and Kalusowski (POL), they were announced as relay-only athletes at first by their federations, to swim the breast leg for their country’s medley relay. So they are entered at a higher priority. Then World Aquatics invited them to swim their B cuts, I presume because of the lack of entrants in men’s breast events. So they aren’t bonus events per say.
This. Capping it at 200 and having a universality trials & staging camp.
I still think we need to scrutinize the definition of a “Universality” athlete. Some are truly representative of their country, but many others have linked back or joined a particular country for the sole purpose of swimming in the Olympics. The country has no idea who they are, many having never even been to the country. That’s not growing the sport at that point.
It’s sad that the Olympic Games only has room for two heats of 400 IMs for men and women… Nice job with the A cuts WA.