The organizing committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games has unveiled its 2nd set of official test events. For swimming, that will be a standalone Tokyo 2020 Test Event from April 14th-15th, 2020 at the Tokyo Aquatics Center. The meet will be hosted by the Organizing committee.
Each Olympic venue must have 1 test event to validate event operations. These test events are designed to provide “management and operations staff with hands-on experience of running events” and “allow them to collaborate with delivery partners to ensure smooth operations of the Games.”
These events are also often open to all nations, which gives athletes from around the world the opportunity to explore and experiment with their routines at the actual venue. This can help smooth out variations such as the distance from the warmup pool to the competition pool.
Water polo events at the 2020 Olympic Games will be held at the existing Tatsumi International Swimming Center, which is the crowned jewel of the permanent Japanese swimming infrastructure. That venue seats 3,635. The rest of the aquatic disciplines will be hosted in the brand new Olympic Aquatic Center, which was originally scheduled to be a 20,000 seat arena, but has been scaled back to a 15,000 seat arena to save about $163 million on construction costs.
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Other Aquatic Test Events:
- Water Polo (x2) – A water polo test event will happen at the Tatsumi International Swimming Center from October 5th-7th during the Japan Swimming Championships; and another Test Match (likely a set of test matches) will happen from April 11th to 12th in the Tatsumi Water Polo Centre (which will apparently be the rebranded name as the Olympics come closer).
- Artistic Swimming (Synchro) – The rebranded ‘Artistic Swimming’ will have the most appropriate test possible – the Olympic Games qualification tournament will be held at the new Tokyo Aquatics Centre from April 30th through May 3rd. This will select the last 7 teams per discipline for the Olympics.
- Diving – Diving will also be held in the Tokyo Aquatics Centre, and the test event will be a stop on the FINA Diving World Cup tour from April 21st-26th, 2020.
- Open Water – no test event for the Open Water Marathon Swimming has been announced yet.
- See all announced test events so far.