With the flattening of the coronavirus curve slowly taking shape around the world, swimming federations and governing bodies are looking ahead to the 2020-21 swim season in earnest.
We’ve seen a range of coronavirus impacts on national planning, spanning Swim England’s total cancellation of remaining 2020 events to Swimming South Africa’s decision to host its national and junior national championships in September of this year.
Another nation has now joined the planning reveal party, as Swim Ireland has published the first draft of its season plan for 2020-21.
The organization is careful to relay that the plan is subject to change, ‘particularly in relation to any Government phasing that takes place up to and including competitions commencing and any legislation that Swim Ireland receives in the months ahead regarding competitions, numbers permitted in venues and any other such similar guidelines.’
As detailed in the plan, Swim Ireland‘s short course season is scheduled to run from September 1st – December 31st, while its long course season is slated for January 1st – August 31st.
The Irish Open Short Course Championships are on the books for December 14th – December 20th to close out the short course season.
As for the long course main event of the Irish Open Long Course Championships, that Olympic-qualifying competition is written in for April 20th – 24th. As a back up should there be further delays due to COVID-19, dates have been reserved for June 15th – June 19th. The latter scenario, which is only a failsafe, would occur much later than the original timeline should the Olympic Games remained in 2020. The original dates for the Irish Open Long Course National Championships were set for April 1st – April 5th of 2020.
Additional regional meets, team camps and elite competitions such as the McCullagh International are also sprinkled into the schedule.
You can view Swim Ireland‘s competition plan, as well as accompanying notes here.
