Spain Toughens Qualifying Standards For 2018 European C’ships

The Spanish Swimming Federation, Real Federación Española de Natación (RFEN), has published its qualifying criteria for the 2018 European Championships in Glasgow. Each individual event has seen its qualifying standard lowered from that which would have qualified a swimmer for the 2016 edition of the Championships in London.

In events under 400m, swimmers must meet qualifying times in both the prleims and semi-final rounds to wind up as the top 2 automatically selected to the European Championships roster. The 400m, 800m, 1500m freestyle events, as well as the 400m IM have minimum time standards for both prelims and finals, as there are no semi’s for those events. Additionally, the top 4 finishers in both the 100m and 200m freestyle races will be eligible for relay selection as long as they make the indicated marks in each phase of competition.

As with most other nations, the Technical Director has the ability to make discretionary calls to add swimmers who have not strictly complied with the criteria, but had achieved at least 1 of the 2 minimum standards.

You can read the RFEN Selection Criteria document in its entirety here, and can view a chart of 2016 vs. 2018 qualifying times here.

Below are the qualifying times as established by the RFEN:

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G.I.N.A
6 years ago

What are Catalonia’s standards?

Jorge
Reply to  G.I.N.A
6 years ago

Catalonia is Spain.

SchoolingFTW
Reply to  G.I.N.A
6 years ago

Hehe… hilarious is that Jorge responded seriously

Uberfan
6 years ago

USA’s best could make these easy, Spain’s best however

Perasgal
Reply to  Uberfan
6 years ago

We all know that USA’s swimming is much stronger but if you would put this selection criteria for USA as well, american swimmers would approach a 50 scared of messing up either prelims or semifinal (which USA does not have) and not being able to qualify.

As for the 50s, USA would only qualify 1 50 Breastroker with these cuts.

Obviously these cuts are not in sync with spanish swimming

Perasgal
6 years ago

Are they crazy? I mean there are times that are amazing to swim 1 out of 3 tries. Suppose a 50m, in which a minor mistake can cause you a couple of tenths of a second.

50 Breastroke (Braza) needs to swim 2 times; morning prelims and semi finals, only 0.5 seconds slower than beginning of 2017 WR!!

50 Backstroke (Espalda) as an example, only 16 swimmers in the world swam last year below the 24.84 and only 26 below 25.01.

50 Butterfly only 11 swam below 23.31 and only 24 below 23.52. CRAZYYY

50 Freestyle is the easiest with 53 below 22.31 and 57 below 22.35…

I think even the top 20 in the world would have a hard… Read more »

Steve Swims
Reply to  Perasgal
6 years ago

It will be their own fault if nobody from their country can make the cuts

About Retta Race

Retta Race

Former Masters swimmer and coach Loretta (Retta) thrives on a non-stop but productive schedule. Nowadays, that includes having just earned her MBA while working full-time in IT while owning French 75 Boutique while also providing swimming insight for BBC.

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