The big meet that top U.S. swimmers are aiming to qualify for this summer is the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships to be held in Irvine, California on August 19-22. Here is the official website: http://www.panpacificswimming.com/
The qualifying meet for the U.S. is the ConocoPhillips National Championships, which take place in Irvine, California on August 3-7.
According to the Pan Pac website, it is a long-course meet and the participating nations are Japan, Canada, Australia and the U.S. All of those countries have great swimmers so it should be a really fun meet for fans.
The rules state that each team can have 30 men and 30 women. The rules also state that "each country may enter an unlimited number of swimmers in the heats in each event" but "only two swimmers per nation shall be allowed to qualify for the A Finals."
I wonder if this means the U.S. will qualify more than 2 swimmers for some events. I would think that once a swimmer qualifies in one event, then he/she would be able to enter in any other events he/she wants at Pan Pacs, at least in the prelims. It should be very competitive and very interesting.
1 comment:
I was not aware of the "unlimited number of swimmers in the heats" rule. How fascinating. The positive is that someone like Ryan or Michael can swim whatever they want; the negative is that the heats are far more do-or-die than they usually are. You have to put up a super-fast time when the American squad is so deep.
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