As a reminder, you can view all Olympic-qualifying meet postponements, cancellations and overall changes here.
Yesterday British Swimming announced that its Olympic Trials meet, the 2020 British Swimming Championships originally slated to take place April 14th – April 19th, have been officially cancelled. The FINA Diving World Series scheduled to take place at the London Aquatics Centre March 27th – March 29th has also been postponed, as have the British Elite Junior Diving Championships originally slated for April 6th – April 9th.
Details on contingency plans for Olympic qualification have not yet been announced.
However, today British Swimming has revealed revisions pertaining to the qualification windows for its elite Summer meets, with the caveat that even these new changes are subject to change.
Reads the announcement, “Working on the assumption that it is viable for the 2020 British Summer Championships and 2020 Home Nation Summer Meets to take place, we will be inviting athletes on the basis of retrospective long-course performances achieved in the period 1st July 2019 to 12th March 2020. No performance after this date will be considered. This is the case even if some meets start to take place in May.”
The 2020 British Summer Championships are scheduled for July 21st – 26th at Ponds Forge International Swimming Pool in Sheffield.
As we reported in January of this year, the original qualifying window for the British Summer Championships spanned March 13th – May 10th of 2020 only, with the top 24 swimmers ranked in each event in each age grouping receiving invitations. For the 800m and 1500m free events, just the top 18 will be invited to the British Summer Championships.
With this new timing in mind, swimmers unable to compete, let alone train, are able to tap into times performed during last year’s championships season in order to nab spots for this year’s British Summer Championships and Home Nation Summer Meets.
Also per British Swimming‘s announcement today, for para-swimmers, the qualification process will remain the same, however, the qualification window will be slightly longer, with performances from 1st April 2019 to 12 March 2020 being considered. The top 20 swimmers per event, scoring more than 550 British Para-Swimming points, will be invited.
“The process for invites, including notification dates, will be announced in due course,” concludes the announcement.