Initially scheduled to take place between April 9th and 14th in Riccione, the Italian Swimming Federation (FIN) has now announced that they will be canceling the National Youth Championships meet for 2021.
FIN announced yesterday:
Noting the continuing pandemic and the limitations provided by various emergency decrees, with the well-known consequences and repercussions on the organization of sport, it was considered necessary to re-modulate the activities in the swimming sector already planned for the season.
The cancellation of the Youth Championships was one of three important announcements made by the Federation yesterday.
- The dates and venue for the Italian National Championships that had already been announced for this year were confirmed.
- The final stage of the Bremen cup was canceled.
- The National Youth Criteria (Championships) was canceled.
Despite the meet’s cancellation, FIN announced that Age Group Championship meets held on a regional basis will be organized and announced by April 25th. Age Group Championships will be divided into rankings based on year of birth.
This is the second time that the National Youth Championships meet has been changed. In October, it was announced that the meet would only include 10 athletes in each race.
While the Youth National meet has been canceled, the National Championship meet is still slated to take place between March 27th and 31st.
Italy has seen a recent spike in coronavirus cases over the last month. The country currently has had 2,441,854 cases of the virus and 84,674 deaths have been attributed to it. Last week the country announced tightened restrictions that include restricting citizen’s ability to travel outside of their region and a color-coding system to show the rate of infection in each region.