2025 CANADIAN SWIMMING TRIALS
- Saturday, June 7 – Thursday, June 12, 2025
- Victoria, British Columbia
- Victoria Saanich Commonwealth Place
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results
Three-time Olympian Sydney Pickrem confirmed she won’t be competing at the upcoming Canadian Swimming Trials on Wednesday after the initial psych sheets were released with her name missing.
Pickrem, 28, has been training while coaching full-time as an assistant at West Virginia University (WVU) since last July, and though she’s continued to compete, including winning a medal at the 2024 Short Course World Championships, she said she’ll be taking some time away from the pool “to evaluate the next steps in my swimming career” on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
This year my personal swimming career has looked a little different. I’ve learned a lot, went best times, and enjoyed the process along the way. While managing being a Full-Time College Coach & Swimming hasn’t always been easy, it’s been worth it.
With the support of Swimming Canada, I’ve decided not to compete at Trials this year. For the first time in 13 years, I won’t be racing for Canada & I will be taking some time off to evaluate the next steps in my swimming career.
This isn’t goodbye to Swimming, just a see you later😊
Can’t wait to cheer on Canada this summer🇨🇦❤️
Pickrem in no way indicated that she’s retiring, but will take a step back to reevaluate things moving forward.
Since the Olympics, she’s raced numerous times, including the Short Course World Championships in December, where she won bronze in the women’s 4×100 free relay and made a finals appearance in the women’s 100 IM, placing 8th. She also raced at all three stops of the Mare Nostrum Tour over the last few weeks.
Her absence at the Trials makes the race for World Championship spots in the women’s 200 breast and 200 IM a little more open, as she represented Canada in both at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Summer McIntosh is the massive favorite in the 200 IM, but Pickrem was the runner-up to her at the 2024 Olympic Trials in a lifetime best of 2:07.68, and she went on to make the Olympic final and place 6th. Without Pickrem in the field, Mary-Sophie Harvey could be the beneficiary after she placed 3rd at the 2024 Trials.
In the 200 breast, Pickrem pulled out a narrow win at last year’s Trials over Kelsey Wog, who has since retired, so with both of them missing, the door opens for the likes of Harvey and Alexanne Lepage to battle for World Championship berths.
A former Texas A&M Aggie, Pickrem is a three-time Canadian Olympian, having broken out at the 2016 Canadian Olympic Trials to qualify for Rio in the 400 IM before she was 6th in the 200 IM and won a bronze medal on the women’s 4×100 medley relay in Tokyo. In Paris, she placed 6th in the 00 IM and 9th in the 200 breast.
She’s also won seven medals at the LC World Championships, including an individual silver in the 200 IM and a pair of bronzes in the 200 breast and 4×100 medley relay at the 2024 edition in Doha. At Short Course Worlds, she’s won six career medals, including an individual gold in the 200 IM in Abu Dhabi in 2021, and she also won double gold in the 200 breast and 200 IM at the 2023 Pan Am Games.
This summer in Singapore will mark just the second LC World Championships that Pickrem won’t be representing Canada in since debuting in 2015, having withdrawn from the 2023 meet in Fukuoka after initially qualifying.
Who dat?