{"id":471706,"date":"2021-05-06T12:12:08","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T19:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=471706"},"modified":"2021-05-06T13:19:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T20:19:59","slug":"swim-poll-of-the-week-75-believe-swimmers-should-have-more-meet-options-for-olympic-qualification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/swim-poll-of-the-week-75-believe-swimmers-should-have-more-meet-options-for-olympic-qualification\/","title":{"rendered":"Swim Poll of the Week: 75% Believe Swimmers Should Have More Meet Options For Olympic Qualification"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the Swim Poll of the Week for Thursday May 6, 2021, sponsored by Strechcordz Swim Training Products<\/a>. In our last poll, we wanted to know:\u00a0Do you think all national federations should adopt one single meet as an Olympic qualifier or use any number of meets they deem appropriate<\/strong>?<\/b><\/p>\n

The United States, Australia and Canada will all hold their Olympic Trials in June as the US and Australia have not pre-selected anybody to the team and have a famous cut-throat approach to the qualification period. Each swimmer must perform on the day, otherwise they’ll be watching the Games at home. It’s a harsh system, but one that ensure each nation will send their best delegation to the Games, worthy of swimming in the highest pressure situation.<\/p>\n

This leaves zero margin for error, as a disqualification in the prelims or semi-finals could leave some big names off the team, most famously coming from\u00a0Ian Thorpe\u00a0<\/strong>false starting in the heats of the 400 free<\/a> at the 2004 Trials, before getting his spot and eventually winning the gold.<\/p>\n

Other countries like Great Britain and many of the other European nations, are using multiple meets for selection, since they are using the top two that get under the FINA A standard as the means of picking their teams. Some countries selected their swimmers well in advance, to rid them of the stressful qualification<\/a> that is the Olympic Trials. Is this the better option? Perhaps for smaller countries that don’t have as many world class swimmers as the United States and Australia, this is a more effective way to select the team. But we wanted to ask our audience what they thought.<\/p>\n