Open Water Olympic Qualifiers from 2019 Worlds Will Remain Qualified for Tokyo

The International Olympic Committee has confirmed that athletes already qualified “by name” for the 2020 Olympics will remain qualified for the postponed Games, NBC Sports’ Nick Zaccardi reported Saturday.

The IOC had said Thursday that athletes who had already qualified would get to keep their spots — but many of those spots are controlled by national Olympic committees, rather than the international organization, so that news was somewhat unclear.

What this ruling definitely applies to now is open water swimmers who qualified out of the 10K race at the 2019 FINA World Championships last summer. Those 20 qualifiers are listed below.

Women:

QUALIFIED Name Countre
1 Xin Xin China
2 Haley Anderson USA
3 Rachele Bruni Italy
4 Lara Grangeon France
5 Ana Marcela Cunha Brazil
6 Ashley Twichell USA
7 Kareena Lee Australia
8 Finnia Wunram Germany
9 Leonie Beck Germany
10 Sharon van Rouwendaal Netherlands

Men:

QUALIFIED NAME COUNTRY
1 Florian Wellbrock Germany
2 Marc-Antoine Olivier France
3 Rob Muffels Germany
4 Kristof Rasovszky Hungary
5 Jordan Wilimovsky USA
6 Gregorio Paltrinieri Italy
7 Ferry Weertman Netherlands
8 Alberto Martinez Spain
9 Mario Sanzullo Italy
10 David Aubry France

Athletes like Sarah Sjostrom or Hugo Gonzalez, who already hit Olympic qualifying cuts for their nations at specific competitions, could, in theory, have their spots in jeopardy. The national Olympic committees for Sweden and Spain could theoretically extend their qualifying windows with the Olympic postponement and allow for another athlete to take spots that have already been secured.

Whether that will be the case, or if NOCs will adopt the IOC’s stance, remains to be seen.

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About Torrey Hart

Torrey Hart

Torrey is from Oakland, CA, and majored in media studies and American studies at Claremont McKenna College, where she swam distance freestyle for the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team. Outside of SwimSwam, she has bylines at Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, and The Student Life newspaper.

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