Tonight, USA Swimming will be announcing the qualifying times for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials – and we’ll be tracking all the news right here.
USA Swimming will announce the standards in a live webcast tonight, hosted by Olympic gold medalist and swimming commentator Rowdy Gaines. Gaines will be joined by a number of high-profile guests, including Olympic champ Anthony Ervin, USA Swimming Managing Director Lindsay Mintenko and former Florida Gators head coach Gregg Troy.
You can watch the live webcast here.
Time standards are expected to drop sharply from 2016, as USA Swimming has made clear it intends to decrease the size of the meet. More than 1700 athletes qualified and competed at 2012 and 2016 Olympic Trials, and the American swimming federation has said it aims for closer to 1200-1400 athletes to prevent overcrowding of the facility. USA Swimming also shortened the qualifying window to not include the summer of 2018.
Qualifying for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials begins on November 28, 2018 and runs through June 19th, 2020. USA Swimming will accept new qualifications from first-time qualifiers from June 16th-19th, but won’t update anybody’s entry time based on swims after June 15th. Any athlete who hits a qualifying time between then and the entry deadline (in June of 2020) will be eligible to compete at 2020 Olympic Trials. The Trials will take place from June 21-28, 2020 in Omaha, Nebraska.
2020 U.S. Olympic Trial Cuts
Watch the video replay of the hour-long announcement event here:
What is the general opinion of running prelims at the Olympic Trials?
Do we want the prelims to be the same length in time for the top swimmers as the prelims are at the Olympics? If so, the prelims could be flighted so the X fastest number of heats go first and then the rest. That might take away some from the experience of the first time qualifying swimmers but make it more like the actual Olympic prelims for the swimmers that are most likely to make the Olympic team.… Read more »
Ex. 10-12 heats of the 50 free
8-10 heats for the 100 free
5-8 heats for the other 100 distances
4-6 heats for 200 and longer
Could allow to sell two types of prelim tickets though and for the faster session bring in more people that want to see the faster session without having to sit through the slower heats.
Dang. This just got real.
Why is this so overhyped.
Because everything is not the local 10-and-under invitational. This is the biggest national level meet in the country. The lifelong dream of so many. If any meet should be hyped, this is it.
Cause for many of us swimmers/swimmers, this is/was an aspirational goal. Making one, just one, one measly Olympic trials cut. Didn’t matter if it was by 0.01 second. Bragging rights for life! And no, I didn’t. I got to experience the agony of defeat. It built character. They say.
23.1… Time to lift weights, overdose on pre-workout, and wear a mizuno
And train USRPT
Jared or Braden–could you put together a list of how many qualifiers in each event there would have been in 2016 with these cuts?
Joe.. you could do that and share with everyone!
I see 1400 at the meet. I’m not opposed to a big meet though. While there will be some swim tourists at the meet the benefit of a big meet is getting young up and comers the experience at a trials meet. It’s way different from international competition or nationals. I was lucky to have the chance to swim at the 1984 trials as a swim-tourist high school kid. It made the 88 trials a lot easier because I saw all of the drama, pressure and highs and lows.
Do you happen to know how many swimmers were at the 84 and 88 trials ?
84 and 88 were years when the meet was still tiny I am pretty sure.
Cool. I saw those things at the ‘84 trials too. (From the stands, in streets clothes, cheering on friends and teammates). Hmm. That doesn’t sound quite the same. To the person that asked, I seem to recal somewhere between about 50-90 (sometimes 100) people in heats of each event. Does that sound right Mr. Berkoff?
It was up until 2000 where the trails meet was small.
Since I am from the 90s generation and swam distance, I remember the 400 national cut was 4:02 but the trail cut was 3:58, the 1500 was 16:04 and 15:47 (this is in 1996).
So being a swimmer that had to swim those times to qualify, and then to see then not get any faster until this year was a little strange.
The cuts should just be the olympic B cuts since you have to technically go at least that to make the meet
Stop using my name once again. Thank you
Man the distance cuts are still slow. I would like to see 3:55 and 15:33