Swimming Canada has released their 14-strong team for the 2021 Short Course World Championships in Kazan, Russia. The squad includes the majority of the team that Canada recently sent to the Tokyo Games and features one notable omission in the form of International Swimming League breakout star Ingrid Wilm.
- Check out the full press release and roster here.
Wilm just missed Olympic qualification in the summer of 2021 when she swam under the FINA A standard in the 100 backstroke at Olympic Trials but placed 3rd to Kylie Masse and Taylor Ruck. Since then, however, Ingrid Wilm has had a dominant start to the 2021 ISL season where she’s racing for the LA Current.
Wilm’s absence from the roster is made most notable by the fact that she is the fastest woman in the world this year in the short course 100 backstroke, holding the top two times of 55.61 and 55.68 from Matches 8 and 5, respectively. She is also the 5th fastest 50 and 200 backstroker so far this year, holding a 26.08 in the former and 2:02.26 in the latter.
Wilm’s absence won’t leave Canada without some firepower in the backstroke events, however, as 4-time Olympic medalist Kylie Masse and versatile Olympic butterfly champion will be present in Dubai. Masse, who won silver in the 100 and 200 backstrokes in Tokyo, is also known for her short course talent and is currently ranked 3rd in the 50 and 100 this season, as well as 4th in the 200.
While she’s an Olympic gold medalist in the 100 butterfly, MacNeil is certainly capable of some world-class backstroke as well. At the recent FINA World Cup meet in Berlin, MacNeil threw down a 25.84 50 backstroke to lower Ingrid Wilm‘s Canadian record of 26.08 from Match 8.
Despite the fact that Masse and MacNeil will be medal threats in the backstroke, the fact that Wilm won’t be racing at Worlds means that we won’t see the world’s top-ranked 100 backstroker in the field. According to the selection procedures Wilm could have been selected at the discretion of Swimming Canada, but was not.
Swimming Canada FINA World Championships Selection Procedures
- Priority 1 – Individual Event Selection: Results from the Selection Window for all eligible Swimmers who achieve the published 15th FINA World Swimming Championships ‘A’ 50m qualifying time standard (Appendix A) will be ranked using the FINA World Rankings as of September 8, 2021. The top eight Swimmers, regardless of gender, will be selected in rank order, to a maximum of two Swimmers per event and eight Swimmers in total.
- Priority 2 – Individual Event Selection: Should any Team positions remain open after Priority 1, the Swimming Canada High-Performance Director has the sole discretion to add Swimmers to the Team, who have at minimum achieved the published 15th FINA World Swimming Championships ‘B’ 50m qualifying time standard (Appendix A), regardless of gender, to a maximum of one ‘B’ standard qualified, or two ‘A’ standard qualified Swimmers per event, and a maximum of eight swimmers in total, inclusive of those from Priority 1.
While Wilm likely wasn’t among the top 8 ranked swimmers based on the long course time standards that Swimming Canada relied on for Priority 1 selections, she was under the FINA A standards in the 100 backstroke and was under B standards in both the 50 and 200 backstrokes.
Considering that there is no mention of short course meters qualifying standards in the selection criteria, Wilm’s short course breakout this fall may have had no impact on her candidacy for the team.
Wilm isn’t the only elite backstroker who wasn’t named to the roster as Olympic medalist and current Stanford swimmer Taylor Ruck and Mary-Sophie Harvey are also not on the list. Ruck just returned to Stanford after a 2-year redshirt period while Harvey is currently racing in her third ISL season for Energy Standard.
Despite those omissions, Canada will be sending a solid roster to the Championships in December as 14 of Canada’s 2021 Olympians will be making the trip.
We haven’t seen much from Penny Oleksiak in terms of short course racing since her premier ISL season for Energy Standard, but her recent Olympic comeback displayed her continuing strength. Oleksiak picked up bronze in the Tokyo 200, as well as a 4th place finish in the 100 freestyle.
Summer McIntosh, who had a record-breaking ISL new meets after her Olympic debut will be a force to be reckoned with the freestyle events and will be joined by breaststroke/IM standouts Sydney Pickrem, Bailey Andison, and Tessa Cieplucha.
Rounding out the women’s roster will be the sprint freestyle/butterfly trio of Rebecca Smith, Kayla Sanchez, and Katerine Savard. On the men’s side, teen stars Finlay Knox, Cole Pratt, and Josh Liendo will follow up their Olympic debuts in Tokyo in Dubai, joined by 2-time Olympian Yuri Kisil.
Check out the full roster here:
Women
- Bailey Andison
- Tessa Cieplucha
- Maggie MacNeil
- Kylie Masse
- Summer McIntosh
- Penny Oleksiak
- Sydney Pickrem
- Kayla Sanchez
- Katerine Savard
- Rebecca Smith
Men
Swim Canada back on it with their bull political moves. They have ran so many athletes into the ground.. (Padington, Ludlow, Knelson, Young..) all once extraordinary young talented swimmers who had no support and now gear all hopes towards their favored athletes who fit their desired description. Maybe they would’ve had a decent breaststroke leg in the 4×100 medley at Tokyo if they cared about anyone outside of High Performance Ontario. This federation is famous for stealing spotlight away from swimmers who are well deserving (Wilm, Harvey..) who are FAST. Harvey is one of the fastest in the world for 2+ SCM events… They only care about what is good money wise, and what makes them look good. Send the… Read more »
The first few swimmers you have listed.. I have no idea who they are other than Knelson who placed 4th at the CWG 2018.
Harvey seems to only have had a breakout SCM season this past month. Otherwise I believe her performances on the Canadian National Team have been quite unreliable? Was Harvey at Worlds in 2019? I last remember her contribution to the 8th place 4×200 Canadian team relay at 2017 WC.
Criteria issued months ago stated clearly based on lcm times which means ISL or World Cup results were never going to be taken into consideration (many swimmers did not even attend these circuits). USA seems to be doing the same and both countries prioritizing the fastest lcm swimmers for international competition (not scm/scy). Is this a right/wrong decision……?, but explains why very fast scm swimmers not named.
It also said a max team size of 8 swimmers. So clearly they didn’t follow the criteria and even so Ingrid and Mary meet the criteria.
Agree definitely taking more than the originally announced which is great. But it appears followed the criteria to add the swimmers. Priority one is Fina A a time 2 per country per event. Wilm went under Fina A in the 100 back but McNeil went faster at trials in prelims so she will get the spot with Ruck not on team. What events did they make the criteria?
Fair enough to pre set criteria, flawed or not. This is where for a ‘professional’ show case the federations and FINA need to have alternate creative solutions to include the best swimmers, ie Santos a couple years back for Brazil. Have a pool, pardon the pun, of top ranked athletes not previously selected by federations and extend invite to them. Ie. Track used a global t ranking system as part of selection process for Olympics on top of federations.
Totally agree there’s definitely more innovation that can be put into selection criteria where there could be Fina selected wildcard entries based on very current swims.
Also if ISL & the World Cup were going to be used as selection criteria for Canadian swimmers my bet is a lot more would’ve entered themselves in those circuits and probably had a very different aug/sept training plan.
Wrong country I know, but when will American roster be posted?
Let’s hope Pickrem will actually show up..
Shell skip 400 IM if she swims for sure
Really, at this point why are they even putting her on a team . . .
Ok time to leave this alone. She is Canada’s all time best IMr period and finalled at the Olympics. She dropped the 4IM either because she was not quite healthy to start the meet (slower 2IM reaffirmed that possibility) or that she decided to put all her eggs in one basket. Didn’t affect anyone else re qualification. Other top end swimmers did so as well. After the 2IM she made herself available for really duty and performed as best she could and better than any other Canadian o option in the breast leg of the Medley.
Also still no really great 100 br option for the women. Would have been a good opportunity to get a young up and comer 100 breaststroker some international relay experience to build toward 2024. Are there no rising female sprint breakstrokers in Canada?
Swim Canada who recently cancelled their open water championships, have cancelled or backed out of virtually every event in the last 2 years.As the USA sends a junior team to euro sc champs and Italy name 40 swimmers to Dubai, Canada seems to want to try and save more money by sending a small team to Dubai.What are they spending their money on?It doesn’t seem to be the swimmers….the best 100 backstroke left off to save money?
Whoever is making the decisions at swim Canada needs to be fired. First things first everyone on the team deserves to be there. However based off the olympics they should have learned that they need to put more effort into trying to develop the mens side specifically sprint free (4×100 was 4th) and female Br (slowest split in the field). They are just stupid for leaving Ingrid off the team when she can go for the WR.
While it’s stupid to leave her off there’s no reason she can’t go for the WR in ISL (same place the current WR was set).
Kelsey Wog is always reliable SCM so I’m unsure why they wouldn’t have selected her, as she’s extremely versatile and has a fast 200 IM as well. But her performances in Tokyo might have made decision with her being left out? With Faith Knelson nowhere to be heard of recently, it would’ve been interesting to see the other 19 year old, Avery Wiseman who had solid performances at trials get the chance.
Wog has been quite poor in ISL so far this year.
Faith found herself addicted to country music & moved to Tennessee.. She is now known as Fath Twain.
My God what an omission if she wanted to go. Plenty of time to add her and a couple others (Harvey? Hayden? ) who have actually swam short course lately and fast! This isn’t Olympic type selection, plus it’s not like the team is massive with little wiggle room. Short sighted… Unless she ‘declined’ and then I retract all 🤔😱😁
I heard she applied