In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Paralympics Swimming is still moving forward with plans for the WPS World Series Stop in Indianapolis, scheduled for April 16-18, the organization told National Team athletes in an email Monday.
The organization also said that “as the situation evolves,” it will address National Team requirements and “adjust them accordingly to be fair.” It also told athletes to reach out if they are struggling to find a practice facility.
The Indianapolis meet would be the fourth stop in the now-five-meet series; the stop in Singapore, originally scheduled for May 1-3, has already been canceled, as was the Feb. 27-March 1 stop in Italy. Brazil is still scheduled to host a meet March 25-28.
Around 900 athletes, coaches and officials from 42 countries were going to be involved in Italy’s event before it was canceled, according to World Para Swimming.
This year’s meet in Indianapolis, should it go on as planned, would mark the fourth straight year the venue has hosted WPS World Series event. The 2020 series is the first to take place in an Olympic year.
The 2019 season saw over 1,300 swimmers from 84 countries compete. The overall results of each World Series season are calculated using a standardized World Para Swimming points system to score each race in an attempt to ensure that the overall winners will be the best performing athlete over the course of the entire series.
This is a big classification meet for a lot of athletes leading up to trials. Are there are US based IPC classifiers?
I don’t know of any public list of classifiers, but I’d have to imagine that there are.
I’ve never known there to be any US classifiers at the International level, only national. To qualify for trials, swimmers would need to be internationally classed. I can’t find any public information either.
https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/document/190523130241267_2019_05_23%2BWPS%2BOfficials-%2BClassifiers-%2Bfor%2Bwebsite.pdf
Here is the list from the WPC page of the current classifiers. Note the date of 23rd May 2019.