2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES
- Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
- Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
- La Défense Arena — Paris, France
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Full Schedule
- SwimSwam Preview Index
Sophie Kaufman contributed to this report.
Initial entries for the Olympic (pool) swimming events have been released, which means it’s time to analyze. And it’s easy this time!
A decade of prayers have been answered. The Olympic entries were published in a .xls format.
It’s the little things that keep us motivated over here…#swimming
— Braden Keith (@Braden_Keith) July 12, 2024
Over on Instagram, Swimming Stats has already started breaking down the number of entries per event:
View this post on Instagram
Now, we’re going a step further to dig into how athletes qualified for those events. Earlier this year, World Aquatics warned that the athlete quota might result in B cuts not earning qualification.
In the end, there were 37 entries from B cuts, over eight times fewer than the number of universality entrants (304), which in turn is just under half the number of entries that qualified outright with an A cut (609).
The number of universality entrants tapers off dramatically as the distance increases. The women’s 50 freestyle has the highest number with 55, compared to only 24 athletes under the A cut of 24.70. The women’s 50 is also tied for the event with the most entries; the other one is the men’s 100 free with 79 entries.
For nations only sending swimmers under the universality rules, it makes sense that they’d gravitate towards the shorter freestyle races.
On the other end of the spectrum, the most technically complex race (the 400 IM, which requires ability in all four strokes) has no universality entrants across both the men’s and women’s events. Barring scratches, only 16 men and 16 women will race the 400 IM in Paris. That’s the lowest number of entries across all events.
Four of the five least-entered events are 400 meters or greater, meaning it’s unlikely we’ll see a similar situation to Tokyo where everyone who swam the prelims of the women’s 200 butterfly earned a second swim. There are still only 19 entrants in the women’s 200 fly, the fewest of the events with semifinals, but that’s two more than were on the psych sheets three years ago.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. leads the way with the maximum 56 individual entries. Australia is close behind, with 53 entries. The Aussies are just missing second entrants in the men’s 200 fly, men’s 1500, and women’s 100 breast.
The U.S. also has the most top seeds across all events (8), as well as the most in women’s events. For the men’s events, Chinese swimmers have the most top seeds with four.
| Top Seed (Men) | Top Seed (Women) | Total | |
| USA | 1500 Free, 100 Back | 800 Free, 1500 Free, 100 Back, 200 Breast, 100 Fly, 200 IM | 8 |
| Australia | 50 Free, 800 Free | 200 Free, 400 Free, 200 Back | 5 |
| China | 100 Free, 100 Breast, 200 Breast, 200 IM | 100 Breast | 5 |
| Canada | 100 Fly | 200 Fly, 400 IM | 3 |
| France | 200 Fly, 400 IM | 2 | |
| Germany | 400 Free | – | 1 |
| Hong Kong | – | 100 Free | 1 |
| Hungary | 200 Back | – | 1 |
| Romania | 200 Free | – | 1 |
| Sweden | – | 50 Free | 1 |
If races were won on psych sheets, the U.S. would walk away from Paris atop the medal table after the individual events. But it’s not as simple as that.
- Want to know who SwimSwam thinks will win gold? Check out our event-by-event previews.
- Think you know better? Test your skills in our pick’em contest.
Soon, the Olympics kick off, and we’ll have our answers. For now, we’ll have to be content with speculation.
Interesting the disparity between male and female entries across the board. The only events with more female entries is the 50 free, 200 free and 200IM. In general there are significant more male swimmers going to Paris then women despite to purported “gender equality” narrative. Were the A cut times for women too tough I wonder?
Cut times are based on semi times from Japan so in theory should be similar difficulty to men. The challenge may speak to depth in women’s swimming across all countries… The best countries can only send their 2 best (even if they are very deep). Some countries impose their own “A*” cut… ie GBR and JPN, higher than AQUA’s standard. And sadly, in many countries women’s swimming is simply not as popular/supported/deep – i.e. For the whole African continent only RSA has “A” qualified women.
Just to note, cut times are based on prelims from Tokyo
Agree that there’s a very different distribution in women’s swimming times than men’s
That table is a little misleading. Kaylee and Tatjana didn’t enter with their times from trials which would make them top seed in the 200IM and 200 breast. So you’d actually have USA 6, AUS 6 and RSA 1.
Why is there such a massive discrepancy between the number of entrants for the women’s (29) vs men’s (79) 100 freestyle?
Event progression maybe ? The men’s 100 is nearing/in a golden age right now, with talent from all over the world, but the women’s has been kind of stable the last couple of years, nobody’s near Sarah’s WR and mostly “big swimming countries” have women qualified in the event
idk, but it’s mostly universality entries driving it.
Seems like in general the women had far fewer qualifiers hitting cuts than the men overall, which is interesting. Dunno if that’s related to where they put the cutoffs or anything?
The women have bigger stars and less depth at the top while men have more depth closer to the top. This is massively obvious when you look at the relay times for the freestyle relays as well. It is competitive to just make a final for the men but USA/AUS could probably use their 7-10th fastest swimmers in heats for women and still make the final comfortably.
A cuts are decided by who comes 14th in heats at the previous Olympics and the women had very fast heats as well.
Two factors really:
Men’s events have greater depth overall and that is particularly true with the 100 free. There are 32 men with the OQT in the 100 free compared to only 14 for the women. All but three corresponding events have more mele entries than female (and one of those three had a huge 55 universality entries).
The 50 free is a very popular event for the women’s universality athletes. There are 55 Universality entries for the women’s 50 free compared to 14 for the 100 free, almost four times as many. For the corresponding men’s events the ratio is a lot more balanced with 46 in the 100 free and 35 for the 50 free.
Hahahaha, every female and male qualify for the 400 IM semis/finals.
Haha 400+ don’t have semifinals.
Laughs in Summer McIntosh and Leon Marchand
How did Destin Lasco, Gabe Jett, and Trenton Julian qualify? Oh wait
Hey Andrew. What is the reasoning for always posting negatively and bashing on people? For laughs? Genuine hate for the people? I’m curious why it does not appear to come over with you ever posting positive posts.
I ask this question but also realize I most likely will not even come back to this post to see the response.
Will ten lanes be utilized for the heats?
I don’t think you’re eligible for records when there are ten lanes. Someone mentioned this in a comment during US Team Trials.
Not in Olympics
37 entries from B cuts… This number included ‘B’ entries from swimmers who already they have other ‘A’ qualification (e.g. MSH added 400 free, two Hong Kong swimmers added 1 event each).
Do we have stats of how many swimmers actually got invited as B cut swimmer?
Who is the top seed in women 200 fly? Because that’s missing from the list. Regan Smith or Summer?
summer is
World Aquatics has a qualification ranking page. Times done at non designated meets can’t be used as seed times.