Universality is not a problem in swimming, but there is a Universality problem in swimming.
During the conference call with swimming’s most specific media members on Friday to discuss the new qualification system, I asked if there was concern that qualifications are ceding entries from fast swimmers for those by slow swimmers, to put it bluntly.
Data point: Athletics (aka track & field and road races) get 1,810 spots for 48 events; aquatics gets 1370 spots for 55 events.
Without explicitly agreeing, World Aquatics CEO Brent Nowicki indicated that this was a real concern, and jumped on the moment to advocate for a reversal of the quota reductions in swimming over the last decade.
Swimming had 900 athletes in Rio, 878 in Tokyo, and 852 in Paris. The number has been reduced to 830 for the Los Angeles Olympic Games, which has forced AQUA to fit a “bigger foot…in the same size shoe” with the addition of six new events.
“The fight’s ours. It’s our fight to take and win. We need more quota, that’s it. 40% of our budget goes into development. That’s a lot of money that we’re pushing to grow the sport. We’ve seen in Paris and even in juniors a great diversification of medals.
“We want to avoid those left field surprises. We don’t want to lose out on really good swimmers who have really great races. That’s where we are right now. We risk having really great swimmers miss medals.
“It’s not lost on all of us that that’s a concern for us.”
He indicated that AQUA was losing spots due to an influx of new team sports like cricket at the Los Angeles Olympics, and that it was a constant conversation about how to expand spots for swimming in Brisbane.
“When we looked at time standards, we have a distinct…we do not want to lose athletes that will make the final or semifinal even. That’s a big factor for us, so there’s a balance. It’s important for us, it’s important for the IOC, that we have as many countries participating as possible,” Chief Sport Officer Mike Unger added.
While making their case, Nowicki and Unger emphasized that swimming has a big universality component and that 40% of their budget goes to global sport development (taking a dig at the Enhanced Games, which does not invest in sport development in far-flung places).
And that’s great. I think Universality in swimming is a good thing!
I used to coach at a small private school in Houston where we had short morning practices that nobody really wanted to attend. The school produced some good swimmers, maybe 1-2 college swimmers every season, but the team was filled with a lot of ‘nerds,’ which I use in the most appreciative sense.
At some point while discussing the future of the program, I expressed concern that our early morning practice window (the school’s culture did not encourage early risers) was keeping the program from being as competitive as other sports at the school. My athletics director said that the school viewed swimming as providing value because every student was required to do 3 seasons of athletics, and swimming was a useful spot for kids who weren’t runners and had limited interest and aptitude in ball-based sports.
And after he made that clear, I was actually relieved by it. Those kids showed up, they worked hard, they created positive cultural changes, even if they never contended for league titles.
I think swimming provides a similar benefit to the IOC, but they’re losing sight of it. Most of the smallest delegations to the Games included swimmers. Swimmers provide an opportunity for these nations in the periphery of world sport to show up, ride a boat, wave a flag, inspire their nation, and become inspired by other nations. Swimming can be the gateway to gl0bal sport for many of these nations. Their spot to feel included.
Countries like Vanuatu and St. Kitts and Nevis and Mauritania are never going to feel world class football or soccer or rugby teams, and those sports can’t allow whole ‘universality’ teams to enter the tournament.
I already proposed a radical reformation of the Universality system, which was largely ignored by decision makers, even though I think it could aid sport development in those smaller and poorer nations.
There’s a subtext to Universality that nobody wants to talk about. At present, every nation gets 1 vote, no matter how big or small or rich or poor or accomplished or not. Not every nation has the same influence, but they all get the same vote (which has been proposed to change in the past). Keeping all of these nations involved and engaged and with development dollars flowing into them is a sort of legal ‘bribery’ to keep them voting for the status quo. We can’t say for sure who is altruistic about the mission and who values the status quo, but that subtext exists to everything Universality.
At the end of the day, though, if the IOC is going to use swimming as a political dumping ground, to keep nations involved and engaged in the Olympic movement, then they need to recognize that and restore swimming’s quota numbers, or allow for a limit on those quota numbers. If the tradeoff is not fielding 16 swimmers in the women’s 200 fly, that’s not repaying swimming for its efforts to develop sport around the world.
The problem as I see it is how do we show the IOC what the impact is and how it affects swimming at the Olympics? The IOC is burning the candle from both ends for swimming. The number of spots being reduced at the same time as more countries are competing (more Universality spots). The IOC is adding teams so that more or all sports have the same number of men’s and women’s teams (think soccer and water polo have received increased number of women’s teams).
Is it up to World Aquatics or who can show the IOC what is going on?
World Aquatics could also change a little how the selection is done but it would probably only have… Read more »
If it is true that “We do not want to lose athletes that will make the final or semifinal even”, then why not let any athlete who make the Olympics swim any event at the Olympics? The marginal impact on headcount of the sport overall and in the village would be precisely zero, and there would be a negligible (but likely highly beneficial) impact on the heats in the morning and the competitiveness of some events.
In the US, some swimmers, including virtually all of even our best, have to taper completely in order to make the team in all of their desired events. But if say Kate Douglass or Gretchen Walsh were confident that they could make the… Read more »
Is your first paragraph indicating “in excess of the 2 per country rule”?
That actually would have an impact on head count. Countries that aren’t the United States would have a swimmer like a Mollie O’Callaghan get her one qualification slot and then scratch the rest of their events at Trials to get more bodies on the team, and enter 4 women’s 100 freestylers, for example.
In the US, that would actually be a nightmare because you’d still have to cut the roster to 26, so having KD or GW slough their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th events just means USA Swimming has to redefine who gets cut.
The intent would be for a Claire Curzan who might only qualify in say 2 back to swim other events, like 100 fly, 50 back and 100 back where she make finals or even podium. But I see your points that there would be both gamesmanship on the part of some countries, to increase their headcount “artificially”, and also complexity in the case of the US.
One thing to keep in mind is that for at least the last 4 or Olympics if not longer Australia has used their own Q-times which have been much harder than the World Aquatic A-cuts. If Australia had used the same A-cuts that the US does, their roster would been about 5-6-7 additional swimmers, but still a much smaller roster than US. The US trials were so fast that it would only been 1-2, maybe 3 US swimmers that would not have made the team if the Australian cut times had been used.
The 2028 LA Olympics 4 x 100 Mixed Medley Relay Final between Baffin Island and Easter Island is going to be so lit.
Not if Macdonalds island has anything to say about it
There were 1026 swimmers at the 2000 Olympics and 20 years later there will be 830, that is a reduction by 19%, even though the sport has grown to include more countries and more events. The reduction for Track and Field has been 12% during the same time period (at that same rate swimming would have 903 swimmers in LA).
Agree, they need to be able to have universality without taking spots away from deserving competitors.
Why swimming, the #1 sport at the Olympics, continues to lose spots to sports no one will watch is baffling and quite frankly it’s embarrassing that leadership has allowed it to happen. They are holding all the cards, the Olympics aren’t the Olympics without high quality swimming.
Watching the Heats in London vs Paris it’s such a stark difference in terms of the quality depth. There were many more high caliber athletes in early heats with an outside chance of sneaking into semi-finals 13 years ago, what is worse is that the depth of the sport has clearly improved significantly since that time.… Read more »
This is like the US Senate described in Olympic terms