Proposing Olympic Qualification Reform in Swimming (Universality, World Ranking Invites)

SwimSwam’s Laura Rosado and Sophie Kaufman put together some insightful data this week about how swimmers qualified for the Olympic Games.

Most of the entries into the Olympic Games are qualified via hitting the World Aquatics “A” standard, reserved for the best swimmers on earth. About two-thirds of the individual entries, in fact, are “A” standard swimmers.

Still, the number of Universality entries this year (304) raised a lot of eyebrows because of the IOC-mandated reduction of total athletes invited. That resulted in a lot of fast swimmers with World Aquatics “B” cuts not getting invites, and much-slower Universality swimmers getting invites instead.

I, for one, am not a “Universality hater,” like some of our readers are. I believe it has an important place in the sport and growing it globally. I think one of the strengths of the current administration at World Aquatics is their ability to grow the sport globally.

For many countries, swimming is their connection to the Olympics. Almost every country on earth sends swimmers to the Games, and that’s a valuable service for the sport to provide. The swimming field can be expanded without really impacting the serious contenders.

It reminds me of when my AD told me that my swim program’s value was both in engaging the high-performing athletes, but also providing a rewarding experience for the students who needed their athletics credits but weren’t going to participate in a team or a ball sport.

The reason why swimming Universality is so robust is a little more nefarious, but I also understand this: every country in the world gets a vote in most matters of AQUA governance, and a qualified swimmer lets those national officials have a reason to go to the Olympics. And everyone wants to go to the Olympics. It’s back-door bribery of a sort, but one that I think has one foot in the bucket of acceptable politics.

But if the IOC isn’t going to acknowledge the value that the sport brings via its connection to the world and expand the number of entries offered to swimmers, then the Universality system needs to be adjusted to reflect that. The 2024 cut in athlete numbers from about 1000 to 852, came entirely from swimmers who “earned their way to the Games by being among the fastest in the world.”

Reducing Universality

I believe that Universality athletes should be reduced from about 300 athletes to about 200 athletes: 100 men and 100 women. I think we could debate the exact number, but I think 225 is about right. That’s about 1.5 swimmers per Universality country.

There are, give-or-take, around 150 countries in the world who use Universality for qualifying for the Olympics.

Some folks have proposed a Universality qualifying meet, where the top performers get to go. If this can be monetized, I would support it strongly – because it would make for great drama. Imagine a live leaderboard of the 200 best performers from one meet, updated after every single heat, on some kind of standardized system. This program could also be used for training to enhance the core missions of Universality – growing sport around the world.

The challenge with this system is that swimming isn’t a one-pop qualifier ever, because of the different overlapping sport schedules around the world that make this kind of system hard.

The simpler system would be to use a (reformed) AQUA Points system during the qualifying period to decide who the top Universality performers were. Continue to require these swims to come from IOC-approved meets to attempt to reduce shenanigans, though we have to acknowledge that shenanigans would surely come anyway (Uzbekistan proved this).

But, and this is the most capitalist thing I’ll say in this post: a system that creates competitions for these precious spots will help to foster real development in these non-swimming nations.

Let’s Get Creative

Many sports use “tripartite commissions” to decide who gets to go to the Olympic Games on Olympic bids, so it’s not unprecedented. Swimming wouldn’t like that, so we would have to do something more objective.

But I think a tripartite commission could be useful in a small does. On top of the 225 Universality swimmers, let’s leave 20 spots to reward nations where swimming is actually developing domestically. This is places like Equitoreal Guinea, where after Eric the Eel swam his famous race at the 2000 Olympic Games, having never seen a 50-meter pool, he returned home and developed a competitive swimming program in his country.

He trained in a 12-meter pool. The country now has two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Many (most?) Universality swimmers train abroad, either through World Aquatics scholarship programs, dual citizenships with other countries, or via wealthy parents who send them to prep schools in the UK, Middle East, or America.

But let’s reserve 20 spots for countries that have shown actual plans and initiative in developing competitive swimming programs domestically. These programs don’t have to be in $50 million pools that are churning out true Olympic-caliber swimmers, but some progress in creating real programming could demonstrate an actual commitment to aquatics beyond freeloading administrators.

And Finally, the World’s Best

In addition to re-allocating these reclaimed spots to swimmers with “B” standards, I think in the interest of maximizing competition, they should be reallocated in two other ways:

• Relay swimmers-Let’s fix this issue with countries not being able to take relay-only swimmers on qualified relays, which usually impacts mid-tier swimming nations that could also use some developmental incentive)
• Top (5?) protection-I don’t want to see the Olympics just open up to three per country, because I think some semblance of national limitation is part of what makes the whole process (including Olympic Trials meets) great. But most sports don’t have a “get past the post and you’re in if your top X in your country” standard, rather countries have to earn their qualifications via competition – a system used in sports like open water swimming and even para-swimming. BUT I would like to see a system employed where swimmers who are 3rd in their country but top 6 in the world in a certain time period get protected entries to the Olympics, entries that exist outside of their national selection systems, so long as they’re still top 3 in their country (odds of a country having 4/top 6 in the world in the modern era is very low anyway). I
  • don’t think you need to go entirely deeper than that, and this system would add very few swimmers, maybe 7-8, swimmers to the field, plus a few extra entries for a swimmer like Regan Smith in the 100 fly, already qualified, but with an added event. I think that this system would prove as a fair counterbalance to the acknowledgement of the values of the Universality system.