USA Swimming will not be sending a team to the 2022 FINA World Junior Swimming Championships, a spokesperson for the organization confirmed to SwimSwam on Friday.
The news comes as no surprise after the announcement in March that the Junior Pan Pacific Championships would run in late August (August 24-27) and that the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan were fully committed to the event.
At the time, USA Swimming told SwimSwam that it would certainly be sending a team to Junior Pan Pacs and that it would make the decision on World Juniors once FINA confirmed the dates and host of the event. Given that the dates were expected to conflict, it seemed unlikely that the U.S. would field a team at World Juniors.
The World Juniors were initially slated to run in Kazan, Russia, August 23-28, but were pulled out in late February due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The new host for World Juniors was only confirmed on Thursday, as FINA announced that Lima, Peru would play host to the event from August 30-September 4.
Given the proximity to Junior Pan Pacs, it seems likely that Canada, Australia and Japan will also not be competing at World Juniors.
The U.S. will select its roster for Junior Pan Pacs at the upcoming International Team Trials meet in Greensboro, N.C., scheduled for April 26-30. Junior-age swimmers will also qualify for the Mel Zajac International meet in Vancouver at the trials.
I can not believe all these world class nations are afraid to compete with eg David Popovic, Ksewery Masciuk , Lana Pudar, Marie Moluh, etc etc…. it seems US AUS CAN and JPN are only sending the teams when they are sure about the certain percentage of the medal score table
Lot of old people mad about this. I’m sure kids are plenty happy to be going to an international level competition in Hawaii
I get it is sad but like it’s really hard to do both even if they sent a B team to pan pacs, creating the staff and allocation of resources is tricky. Why go to pan pacs? I hear some ask. Because they already committed to it and USA swimming is a bureaucratic organization and it is what it is.
and they chose the Junior Pan Pacs over the World’s because….?
Also what was the reason for the overlap in scheduling the Junior Pan Pacs and the Worlds?
You’d be surprised to find out who won JR panpacs over the years.
Kaylee McKeown comes to mind.
Because Jr Worlds wasn’t rescheduled/confirmed until the charter pan pac nations agreed to run jr pan Pacs this year to give their athletes at least something this summer. Too little too late from FINA.
Exactly, FINA was too slow. What a shock
Correct. FINA got right on finding another Worlds site (Budapest – timely – well done) …. but took way too long to secure a site for Junior Worlds. Indeed, too little too late.
Related: the other nations fielding teams for Junior Pan Pacs will also likely follow suit, and not attend Junior Worlds. FINA has no one to blame but themselves.
There were some very good reasons why they chose Jr Pan Pacs. When you bid to host a big meet, there some huge financial obligations and to back out of hosting, it is financially a double whammy! And no one knew then the status of world juniors because of Covid and then the Ukrainian war.
Again confused how a regional competition is being prioritized over a worldwide event, it’s like choosing world champs over the Olympics. It seems USA swimming believes pan pacs is a higher level meet than world junior championships or there’s a reason we are not being told about the choice. Curious, as a former European swimmer, I always viewed world juniors as a step above European juniors.
Same thing as prioritizing Comm games over worlds
They don’t. Atleast Australians don’t.
Titmus is going to commonwealth games and not worlds….
maybe cos pan pacs will be in the US
LOL if the Aussies and the Americans are both going to the need over junior worlds, Then junior pan Pacs has automatically surpassed Junior worlds
we will compare results , lets see if sombedody on pan pac will beat time of D Popovici, or beat time of Benedeta Pilato, or Ksawery Masciuk, lets see.
This is the true and full reason, dates and overlapping is just an excuse
Ridiculous. As if USAS doesn’t have more than enough talented juniors to send full teams to each event!? Why not give the kids the experience?
Know the whole story
Why compete against the world to know your worth when you can compete against a few countries to not know anything. Hope we also pull out of the Olympics and send athletes to a regional meet instead. That’ll show’em.
Carson Foster skipped the Olympics and swam the fastest 4IM at sectionals – same principle…
Hahaha
and lost WC both 200IM and 400IM, hmm
Canada is also sending their team only to Pan Pac. So many yonge swimmers are robbed twice: first, by not training/computing for 1.5 year of covid and second, by losing their chances to try themselves at Junior level of international meets. Anyone else wants to ask why male swimming in Canada is so weak?
Cause sending a b squad to another meet will improve male swimming in canada. Right…