Swimming Australia retains April trials amid FINA World Championships postponment until 2023
Swimming Australia will retain its Dolphin selection trials in April in Adelaide amid a global reshuffle in aquatic sport following the announcement that the FINA World Championships, originally scheduled for May in Japan are now postponed until 2023.
This is the second time the swimming world championships have been formally postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic with world swim body FINA stating that Fukuoka will host the every-two-years championships from 14th-30th July next year instead of in May.
It’s the third attempt by the Japanese city which was first due to host in July 2021 until that was pushed back 10 months to make space for the postponed Tokyo Olympics. Fukuoka first hosted the world swim championships in 2001 with the original date meant to celebrate the 20th anniversary.
The knock-on effect of a second delay has been to move the originally scheduled 2023 swimming world championships in Doha, Qatar to a new slot in January 2024, two months later than planned – marking the first time the event will be held in the same year as the Summer Olympics with Paris 2024 set for 26th July to 11th August.
With the Dolphins having anticipated a huge year in 2022, they are now faced with a large gap before the July-August Commonwealth Games in Birmingham - now their major meet of the year. The Australians will now focus on the Commonwealth Games and stick with their April trials.
Dolphins head coach Rohan Taylor told SMH “it was too late to take April off the table as a trial event, with many top-liners already in deep training to ensure they peak at that time. As such, the winner of individual events will book their spot for Birmingham, with supplementary events in Europe and Sydney just over five weeks out rounding out the final fields.
Taylor advised “we want a strong team at Comm Games and some of our team are coming back from illness or injury or a long break. When we work backwards from that, we said we will pick the winners of the events in April and they will go straight through to Comm Games, then there would be other opportunities to qualify.”
Image: Credit: Australian Dolphins Swim Team Facebook
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