2021 LEN EUROPEAN AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Swimming: Monday, May 17th – Sunday, May 23rd, 2021
• Budapest, Hungary
• Prelims at 10:00 am local/Finals at 6:00 pm local
• Event Site
• Entry List
• Live Results
• Live Stream

Wednesday at the 2021 European Championships saw the men and women team up to compete in the 400 mixed medley relay. Mixed relays are a relatively new event in the pool and this summer’s Tokyo Olympics will be the first Olympics to feature a mixed relay. Today presented another opportunity for teams to put themselves in one of the four Wildcard spots for Tokyo.

As a reminder, the top 12 teams from prelims at the 2019 FINA World Championships have already automatically qualified for Tokyo. There are four “Wildcard” spots left for the four fastest teams during the qualification period which runs through May 31, 2021. Teams can decline an invite, leaving a spot for the next fastest team.

Editor’s note: FINA doesn’t officially publish an up-to-date ranking for relay qualifying, so we’ve done our best to compile the current rankings manually.

Prior to Euros, China led the Wildcard contenders by a whopping 6+ seconds by virtue of their world record swim in October. Japan was sitting in the second Wildcard spot followed by Brazil, who broke their national record and South American record in April. Rounding out the Wildcard spots was South Korea. As these rankings pertain to the current Euros, Switzerland, Denmark, and Turkey were all lurking within three seconds of South Korea.

The relays at this week’s Euros have seen a similar theme: a team not listed in one of the top eight Wildcard positions would jump up into the rankings. Today would see France shoot their shot to qualify for Tokyo as Yohann Nodye Brouard, Theo Bussiere, Marie Wattel, and Assia Toutai qualified fifth out of prelims with a new French record of 3:46.39. This swim put the French into the fourth and final Wildcard spot.

Right behind France was Spain and Switzerland, who were both less than a half a second behind the French.

The French made the interesting move to scratch Wednesday night’s final, moving Belarus into the race. France scratching this relay could be seen two ways: one, this is an event that is not valued or two, they do not believe they have a chance to medal in this event.

Denmark moved up into the last “Out” position but as they did not qualify in the top eight, they would not have an opportunity to swim again.

The rankings heading into finals:

Even with France scratching, they still held onto that last Wildcard spot heading into finals. Spain and Switzerland would both need to swim faster while finishing ahead of the other teams to move up into one of the Wildcard spots.

Switzerland was able to get the job done in finals as Roman Mityukov, Lisa Mamie, Noe Ponti, and Maria Ugolkova set a new Swiss record in the relay in 3:46.16, moving up into the fourth Wildcard position, bumping France out.

The full rankings for the 400 mixed medley relay after tonight’s session: