The 2014 Winter National Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina along with the Speedo Winter Junior Championships in Federal Way, Washington will both be featuring long course time trials the morning after the final day of competition.
The long course time trials will be a huge attraction for the two short course meets, especially considering that they’ll be the the first national championships and junior national championships following the release of the 2016 Olympic trials cuts next week.
Although short course times will count towards trials cuts, there’s no doubt that the long course time trials will be greatly utilized, especially by a nation that focuses their season primarily on long course meets.
The Winter Nationals will be held from December 3-6 and Junior Nationals a week later on December 10-13. Junior swimmers who compete at Winter Nationals will have the option to swim bonus events as opposed to their senior counterparts. They’ll be permitted to swim up to two bonus swims considering that they meet the bonus event time standards. Bonus standards were also released for 18&under swimmers at the Winter Junior Nationals.
Olympic trial cuts will be announced on September 18th at the United States Aquatic Sports Convention in Jacksonville, Florida which starts at 2 p.m Eastern time. Following the release of trials there will most likely be more of a focus on long course swimming which deems the long course time trials extremely important.
With these time trials, we could see our first wave of Olympic Trials qualifiers come September.
I’ve always thought having a one-day long course time trial meet directly following NCAAs would be helpful, especially to the graduating swimmers who aren’t sure if they’ll continue on to train after graduation. Why don’t they do that?
Josh – that’s a good idea. I remember some conferences doing that after their conference championships in 2012, the Big Ten for sure. Probably something that will come back bigger in 2016.
They did for DIII directly after the NCAA champs in Indy in 2012.
I think the biggest reason NOT to is because after three (or four as at DIIIs NCAAs) days of hard competition, switching gears right into yet another day of competition isn’t always physically or mentally feasible for many athletes.
I know of only a few athletes who made the Trials cut the day after 2012 NCAAs….and yet I know more athletes who took a week of rest and traveled back to Indy to time trial at a Speedo meet and made it then.
Just some thoughts.
there will be sc standards for Olympic Trials?
“Although short course times will count towards trials cuts”
hey guest – I went in and removed it. I’ve heard similar speculation, but couldn’t find it anywhere (not sure if we reported it or not), so for now we’ll leave that as a “maybe” for the peanut gallery.
Okay thanks for following up on it!
Not a maybe. There will be no SCY cuts for OTrials