In August, Swim Ireland revealed its qualification standards for the 2020 Irish Open Championships, the meet which serves as the nation’s primary trials for 2020 international team selections. Now the organization has published its official selection policy for the big show in Tokyo next year.
Swim Ireland 2020 Olympic Games Nomination Policy
The Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI) is ultimately the body who approves nominations established by the Irish Swimming Team, determining the team size and personnel.
Swimmers can be nominated for individual events via two processes entitled ‘pre-validation’ and ‘post-validation’.
- Pre-Validation: Swimmers must meet or exceed one or more of the times from Table 1 at the bottom of this post at the 2019 FINA World Championships (heat, SF or final), as well as meet or exceed the time listed in Table 2 for the same event at the 2020 Irish Open Championships.
- Note that Table 1 times are the FINA ‘A’ standards, while Table 2 times are faster than the FINA ‘B’ standards.
- There is a ‘descretionary pick’ clause reserving the right of the National Performance Director to select a swimmer who does not meet the Table 2 standard at Trials.
- Post-Validation: Swimmers must meet or exceed one or more of the times from Table 1 at the 2020 Irish Open Championships (heat, SF or final)
Darragh Greene is the only Irish swimmer from Gwangju to have achieved a Table 1 time. The man clocked a 100m breaststroke heats swim of 59.82 to finish 17th and dip under the 59.93 QT. Greene was painstakingly close in teh 200m breast, collecting a time of 2:10.61 when a 2:10.35 QT is needed.
Brendan Hyland also narrowly missed a Table 1 time in Gwanju, producing a new National Record of 1:56.55 in the semi-finals of the 200m fly, just off of the needed 1:56.48.
No relays from Ireland finished within the top 10 at this year’s World Championships in order to earn automatic bids to the Olympic Games, but the men’s 4x200m free and 4x100m medley relay are among our front runners for qualification in the next few months.
Ireland saw 3 swimmers compete in Rio, with Shane Ryan advancing to finish 16th place in the men’s 100m backstroke event. Nicholas Quinn and Fiona Doyle were the other Irish swimmers competing at the 2016 Olympic Games.
