Olympian James Roberts, Paralympian Monique Murphy and Swimming Australia CEO Mark Anderson are among those that will be on-hand Tuesday, July 4th when the location for Australia’s 2018 Commonwealth Games Trials are to be announced.
The Commonwealth Games themselves take place April 4th – 15th in Gold Coast, Australia, while Swimming Australia just announced that the Trials will be held February 28th – March 3rd. As expected, that bumps the Trials timeframe to be positioned much closer to the actual Games, a strategy the organization revealed they would indeed be pursuing after a relatively lackluster outing in Rio.
In February of this year, Australian Head Coach Jacco Verhaeren stated, “Our rationale behind the trials shift is to create ‘more and significant competition’ leading into our benchmark events.
“This change will result in consistent racing in the months leading up to trials. Our system has been structured around the southern hemisphere summer, we now have facilities in warmer places and are able to host our trials closer to the benchmark events which are typically during a northern hemisphere summer.”
