World Aquatics Outlines New Olympic Swimming Qualification Systems Ahead of IOC Approval

World Aquatics has settled on a new and altered qualifying system for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games that will incorporate six new 50 meter stroke races for the first time. While the official document that includes time standards won’t be released until after the IOC rubber-stamps the procedure at its meeting later this week, World Aquatics previewed the procedure with select members of the media last week, including a radically-different process for deciding who gets to race the stroke 50s.

New Events for LA:

• Men’s & Women’s 50 back
• Men’s & Women’s 50 breast
• Men’s & Women’s 50 fly

Quotas

The quotas wouldn’t normally be the lead angle on a qualification system, but for swimming the topic was pervasive throughout the conversation.

Swimming had 900 athletes in Rio, 878 in Tokyo, and 852 in Paris. The number has been reduced to 830 for the Los Angeles Olympic Games, which has forced AQUA to fit a “bigger foot…in the same size shoe” with the addition of six new events.

The reduction in swimming was not a reduction across aquatic sports, rather the aquatic sports cap remained the same with spots shifted to women’s water polo, where two more teams will be added to bring the women’s field up to 12 teams and match the men’s.

AQUA is expecting around 194 National Olympic Committees to participate in swimming in the Los Angeles Olympic Games, which is an increase from the 189 in 2024. They are also expecting more countries to send both a male and female swimmer. That means 10-or more additional spots going to Universality swimmers when compared to Paris.

Universality is a program where countries without qualified athletes can send 1 male and 1 female swimmer to compete in the Games.

This forced World Aquatics to get creative in how to maintain their principles of Universality, which they view as a fundamental part of their mission, without reducing the competitive nature of the meet.

When asked about the balance and risks of reducing swimmers with “A” or “B” standards while also expecting more countries to participate in the Universality program, AQUA CEO Brent Nowicki made it clear that AQUA is pushing to reverse the trend of shrinking the swimming field at the Olympics.

“The fight’s ours. It’s our fight to take and win. We need more quota, that’s it. 40% of our budget goes into development…That’s a lot of money that we’re pushing to grow the sport. We’ve seen in Paris and even in juniors a great diversification of medals,” Nowicki said.

“We want to avoid those left field surprises. We don’t want to lose out on really good swimmers who have really great races. That’s where we are right now. We risk having really great swimmers miss medals.”

He indicated that AQUA was losing spots due to an influx of new team sports like cricket at the Los Angeles Olympics, and that it was a constant conversation about how to expand spots for swimming in Brisbane.

“When we looked at time standards, we have a distinct…we do not want to lose athletes that will make the final or semifinal even. That’s a big factor for us, so there’s a balance. It’s important for us, it’s important for the IOC, that we have as many countries participating as possible,” Chief Sport Officer Mike Unger added.

With events like the women’s 200 fly in recent major world meets barely having enough entries to fill the semi-finals, stiffening of standards makes it feel almost inevitable that there will be an empty semi-final lane in Los Angeles.

Setting Time Standards

While World Aquatics did not release the exact time standards, they said that they have tweaked the way they are being set.

In the past, “A” time standards were set at the 14th or 16th place finisher from the previous Olympics. For Los Angeles, they will be set based on the 14th-ranked entry time from the Paris Olympics.

Unger pointed out that the 14th-ranked entry time is almost always faster than the 14th place result (which will be especially true for Paris, where times were notoriously slow).

Unger said that won’t be strict – there were some tweaks off those 14th place entry times – but that it would be roughly that.

Men

Women

The new minimum time standards for the stroke 50s will be based on prelims of the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka. Of note, those stroke 50s will have only ‘minimum time standards,’ because their fields will be selected differently than the other events.

“B” standards will be about 1% slower than the “A” standard.

Stroke 50 Selections

Rosters will remain at a limit of 26 per gender for the Los Angeles Olympic Games, meaning large countries (mostly the United States, though China may be approaching the threshold as well) will have to find ways to add stroke 50s to their rosters without adding athletes.

The primary selections for stroke 50s will be done at the previous year’s World Cup. This will ‘extend the Olympic window’ for swimming in a sense to align it with other sports, which traditionally begin building toward the Games themselves with qualification events that are much further in advance.

World Aquatics is planning a three stop 2027 World Cup in Europe, hoping to host all of the events in former Olympic cities. At each of those three stops, a different stroke 50 event would serve as a qualification.

Prelims of that race would take place on day 1, cutting the field to 32. In the day 1 evening session, the field would be cut to 16, in the day 2 evening session, the field would be cut to 8, and in the day 3 evening session, the top 6 would earn qualification spots in those stroke 50s for the Olympic Games.

Nowicki added that this was a “first step to modify format” of major swim meets in the future.

Those top 6 are not true ‘direct qualification’ spots though, as they are still subject to the internal qualification rules of their National Olympic Committees – which are not required to accept them. That will be crucial, again, for the Americans, who will have to figure out how to balance 26 roster spots with 3 new events for each gender.

Each country will only be able to have 2 swimmers in the final of those events at the World Cup.

The rest of the fields in the stroke 50s will be filled by athletes already entered in other events (more on that later). This ensures that a maximum of 36 “new athlete” spots will go to stroke 50s.

Relays Reduced

Historically, the top 16 relays from qualification meets have automatically qualified for the Olympic Games. That number is being reduced to 12 for the Los Angeles 2028 Games.

The tradeoff is that countries with 4 qualified men or 4 qualified women or 2 men and 2 women will be able to enter relays where their country was not in the top 12 ranking.

World Aquatics says they expect there to ultimately be more than 16 entries in each relay

There will also be a significant reduction in the number of relay-only swimmers that countries will be allowed to have. Historically, countries that enter 6 or 7 relays were allowed to bring up to 12 relay-only swimmers. Under the new system, those countries will be allowed only 8 relay-only swimmers, with fewer numbers for countries with fewer athletes.

• 1 Relay qualified 2 additional athletes
• 2 Relays 3 additional athletes
• 3 Relays 5 additional athletes
• 4 Relays 6 additional athletes
• 5 Relays 7 additional athletes
• 6 or 7 Relay 8 additional athletes

This is likely to shift how some countries, like Great Britain, that have historically declined relay spots in qualified events will approach those entries. Now, they could be incentivized to swim the relay (even if not with effort) in heats in order to get those extra relay-only swimmers.

This could force some countries to re-evaluate how they select their relay-only swimmers, though it will impact different countries in different ways. The United States, for example, only took 7 relay-only swimmers to the Paris Games:

• Ryan Held
• Matt King
• Brooks Curry
• Drew Kibler
• Blake Pieroni
• Erika Connolly
• Abbey Weitzeil

Taking more relay swimmers, though, could be advantageous for some countries, because of another change.

Unlimited Entries for Each Athlete

Dovetailing with the above, with the new systems focused largely on ‘athlete numbers,’ once an athlete is in the meet, they are able to swim as many events as they want, presuming they have a “B” standard in that event and that they don’t exceed their country’s 2-per-event limit.

Mike Unger, an American who swam collegiately at Wisconsin and was formerly the #2 executive at USA Swimming, made comparisons to the former NCAA qualifying systems that allowed a similar unlimited entries for qualified swimmers.

Crucially, these secondary entries are exempt from time standards. 

An example from Mike Unger: an NOC has one swimmer in the men’s 400 free with an A standard.

They also have an invited B swimmer in the 400 IM.

Can the B 400 IM swimmer also swim the 400 Free (provided the NOC has not exceeded the 2 athletes in the 400 free)?

• With the B cut in the 400 free? Yes
• Without the B cut in the 400 free? Answer is still yes.

This is relevant for effectively every nation, including the powerhouse Americans, who lacked a second entry in the men’s 800 free last year because they didn’t have a second swimmer with an “A” standard in the event during the qualifying period. Under the new rules, they could have used a swimmer like David Johnston, who swam the 1500 free, if they chose to.

These bonus events will not apply to Universality athletes without time standards, but will apply to both individual and relay competitors. Universality athletes with a “B” cut (but who are not invited) will be able to swim 1 additional event, regardless of standard in that additional event.

Schedule

While AQUA said that this release of information wouldn’t include the schedule, which still has some work to do, there were a few key revelations.

• The Budapest 2027 World Championships will mirror the Olympic schedule, meaning 9 days of swimming. That’s new, as the World Championship schedule has historically different pretty significantly. AQUA will have the ability to maybe shift events around within a day after seeing the schedule play out in Budapest, though they are not expecting to make substantial changes.
• The schedule will change pretty significantly rather than just dropping stroke 50s into the existing framework.
• They talked about how the sense of what is and isn’t a double has changed. One example given was that the men’s 50 and 100 free had no overlapping finalists in Paris, creating a paradox about whether that is still an ‘obvious double.’
• The entries or expected entries of top athletes are considered when making schedules, though Technical Swimming Committee chair Craig Hunter emphasized that it was “for the benefit of the sport as a whole” rather than any specific athlete. This came into focus when the schedule was changed in Paris to accommodate the host country’s star athlete Leon Marchand.

Odds and Ends

• World Aquatics will move to “A” and “B” standard nomenclature, eliminating the previously confusing “Olympic Qualifying Time” and “Olympic Consideration Time” nomenclature.
• Eliminating semifinals of 200 strokes has been discussed but never seriously considered, citing a number of reasons including broadcaster preferences and the ability to spread out overlapping events in finals sessions.
• Historically, athletes from the Refugee Team, which AQUA has no control over, have not counted against the quota. In Los Angeles, they will, but AQUA is pushing back on that. While that is usually only 2-3 athletes, AQUA says that every spot counts, because those will likely eliminate athletes with “B” cuts and the ability to make a semifinal or a final from the meet.