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USA Swimming Drops Irvine, California Site of January Pro Swim Series

As the global coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve, so to has USA Swimming’s approach to the 2020-2021 Pro Swim Series, the organization’s highlight national competition tour.

The latest change, announced Friday, reduces January’s Pro Swim Series event from a 3-location meet to a 2-location meet, with San Antonio, Texas and Richmond, Virginia remaining, while there will no longer be a site in Irvine, California. The meets will be held from January 14-17, 2021.

“Following the December 29, 2020, extension of the Regional Stay-at-Home Order for the Southern California Region, USA Swimming, in consultation with the city of Irvine and host club Novaquatics, has made the decision to cancel the Irvine location for the upcoming TYR Pro Swim Series event from January 14-17, 2021,” according to a press release.

USA Swimming announced its new plan for the early 2021 Pro Swim Series stops in December, saying that in an attempt to reduce the number of athletes at any specific location, they would spread the meet across three locations. San Antonio was set to be the “primary site” featuring an “invite-only field comprised of the top ranked U.S. swimmers,” with locations in Richmond and Irvine featuring up to 100 male and 100 female athletes each.

Under the new plan, San Antonio will remain the primary site, with Richmond featuring “approximately 100 female and male athletes, respectively.”

The meets will air live on NBCSN, the Olympic Channel, and be live-streamed on usaswimming.org. No specific entry lists of participating swimmers have been released yet.

California has become one of the nation’s biggest hotspots for the coronavirus pandemic, with Orange County, where Irvine is located, averaging 3,642 new daily cases over the last week (114-per-100,000 population). At 93.9-per-100,000 cases, California has the highest current rate of new daily positive cases of coronavirus in the country over the last week. New York Time data reports 21,449 patients infected with coronavirus in California hospitals as of Thursday.

California also has instituted some of the strictest stay-at-home orders in the country, making hosting a meet with 200 athletes challenging and uncertain.

The trend in California has begun to turn. After the 7-day rolling average peaked on December 22 at almost 45,000 new daily cases, the 7-day average has fallen to just over 37,000 cases. Thursday saw 32,000 new cases.

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Exswimmerish
3 years ago

Any word how / if this will affect entries for the other meets?

Dunno, was it first come first served in Richmond?

Corn Pop
3 years ago

Another win for Texas.

Crazyaboutswim
3 years ago

Skyline in Mesa would be a great decision! Still be swimming outside like Irvine and hotels and restaurants open. Let the swimmers swim.

Sean
3 years ago

This was entirely predictable when they picked the site.

Hswimmer
3 years ago

Liberals…

Urahrah
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

This virus isn’t political. The reason we are in such a bind right now with cases and deaths is because we have made the response political.

Hswimmer
Reply to  Urahrah
3 years ago

How many deaths out of the whole country’s population is there? Exactly.

Someone who takes the pandemic seriously
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

If you really cared about your family’s and friend’s health you would recognize that this is a good decision. Politicizing a PANDEMIC is ridiculous when you can’t recognize that over a million people have died from covid. People with families, friends, lives. You are selfish for saying that those million people don’t matter.

Erik
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

Perhaps a little background in disease, infection and statistics is in order to understand just how big a deal this all is right now…

Perfect
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

Maybe the precautions you hate so much are the reason the percentage is β€œlow”? It seems like you don’t understand that and probably never will lol.

Last edited 3 years ago by Perfect
Hswimmer
Reply to  Perfect
3 years ago

lol okay sheep

Perfect
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

See you don’t, and the fact that you can’t even refute it and resort to insults makes it sadder.

Hswimmer
Reply to  Perfect
3 years ago

πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

SwimSam
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

Yikes, this is hard to read. Maybe take a step back and take a breath

Dan
Reply to  Hswimmer
3 years ago

Just under 1,100 / 1,000,000 and that number is increasing with about 8-12 per day right now (depending on how many that dies each day). I think it is about 2 months ago that the number was around 700 / 1,000,000 for the USA.

Corn Pop
Reply to  Dan
3 years ago

Homicides are up also . Prelim FBI stats suggest a 15 % national rise . Some cities are flat but others are 》30% .
Sometime I the future we ma y get objective Covid 19 stats but I wouldn’t hold my breath. By the time we take out those already in the departure terminal & add the co morbidity stand by desk , we shall see.

Then we will see the next few years , but US life expectancy was already dropping from the opioid epidemic & post GFC personal difficulties maybe they are one & same ).

Last edited 3 years ago by Corn Pop
Dan
Reply to  Corn Pop
3 years ago

I agree that true numbers are hard to come by for different reasons (many countries do not want to look to bad). Ex. there are government institutions within each country that say the numbers are under reported by about 100,000-120,000 for the US, Russia is supposedly underreported by 220,000-240,000 and China by 40,000 give or take so from these 3 countries the numbers might be underreported by 400,000-500,000. Spain, France and Italy have had health organizations that say that their numbers are underreported, a few countries stopped reporting for a while.
I have also heard that some areas in the US supposedly reported all deaths as Covid-19 to get additional government funding, so we will probably never know the… Read more Β»

Irish Ringer
Reply to  Urahrah
3 years ago

The virus may not be political but California does seem to take an extreme stance on how to deal with it and so far the results haven’t been favorable.

Last edited 3 years ago by Irish Ringer
VikingMan
Reply to  Irish Ringer
3 years ago

There are actually 39 states ahead of California with a higher per capita death rate. Considering that the state is still a tourist destination and an international entry point, it’s doing better than most think. That might be a problem too. Some people are so used to parroting talking points from their choice of media that they don’t know how to think anymore.

Frank A Wilson
3 years ago

Perhaps Skyline Aquatic Center, Mesa, Arizona would be a good substitute location?

McQueen
Reply to  Frank A Wilson
3 years ago

CA residents cant leave the state anyways…

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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