Swimming Australia has announced a change in the format of their national team trials, beginning next year.
Traditionally the meet has run for eight days so as to mimic the format of major international meets, complete with prelims, semi-finals, and finals. The format originally came about under the leadership of former head coach Don Talbot in an effort to better prepare the national team for competing in the international format. However, the organization has recently elected to reduce the meet from eight days to five, cutting out all semi-final heats.
National Coach Jacco Verhaeren explained to The Australian, “we don’t have the depth to have making semi-finals a real challenge for the top athletes, so we want to put more pressure on the heats.”
Under the new format swimmers will need to set a top eight time in preliminaries in order to move on to the finals. The top two athletes during finals will then secure a spot on the national team for next summer’s World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
Australia, having not performed quite up to expectations at the Rio Olympics, reportedly made the decision to shorten the national team trials before the Games began. Despite calls for Australia to adopt the United States’ system of a later trials, Verhaeren stands firm that it was not the timing of last spring’s Australian trials that affected Team Australia’s performances in Rio.
Rather, Verhaeren has expressed concern that the focus on producing strong performances at a major championship every year has led to swimmers feeling fatigued at the conclusion of the four-year cycle. Instead, Verhaeren would rather put the emphasis on the four-year cycle and better preparing athletes for each upcoming Olympic Games.
Read more from The Australian here.
-all swimming should follow suit-semi finals was just a way for #FINA #IOC to sell more tickets, were swimmers ever consulted?
I trust you’ve consulted with all swimmers regarding your suggestion? If you want make the sport even less entertaining for spectators, why bother with heats? Go one step further and make all races timed finals.
Well stated!
FINA? Since when have they been interested in the swimmers re: Russians in Rio?!
What will happen with Paras?. It is hard enough for Public to understand that a Swimmer can be number ONE in the World, but not make a final in Australia and come away from an event with no medals. How is this Athlete then able to gain Sponsorship? There can be a finals full of S14 Classification as they race faster than an amputees etc. Or is this move all about just catering for the ABLE BODS as per usual.