Why Denison's pool was set-up for long-course yesterday.
The 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials are scheduled for mid-June in Indianapolis, Indiana. This event will be notable for its unique venue. The trials are set to take place in a football stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium.
Here are the time standards to go to the US Olympic Trials.
Those times don’t look so rough, but the three letters ‘LCM’ are doing a lot of the heavy-lifting here. We will assume that anyone reading this blog has either swum or witnessed many a long-course season. Depending on the strengths or weaknesses of the athlete, long-course is either an advantage or a nightmare. If you are one of those swimmers who punches above their weight-class because of unusually good walls and underwaters, LCM can feel like swimming in formalwear.
Emory, Denison and WashU represent the very high end of Division III swimming, and the organizers of the Denison Invitational courteously arranged for a Wednesday evening long-course session that, according to the press release, was ‘observed by USA Swimming.’ This was a shot for these athletes to bag an Olympic Trials Cut on Day 0 of the meet.
If you have questions about the details of distance, officiating, and timing for Olympic Trials Cuts, follow this footnote.1
Olympics Trials Cuts are really unlikely. Many a fantastic NCAA swimmer never gets there. And it is worth remembering that achieving an Olympic Trials Cut doesn’t send you to the Olympics. It sends you to Indianapolis, where you compete against the other people around the country who are as fast as you, if not faster. Theoretically, the two fastest in each event then go to the Olympics as members of the US Olympic Team (more athletes are added for the relays).
Still, an Olympics Trial Cut is a special achievement.
We aren’t comfortable giving a full run-down on what happened because only some - but apparently not all - of the data has been uploaded to USA Swimming. So we are going to limit ourselves to some quick hits.
We see only one Olympic Trials Cut in the data we have.
Emory Sophomore Henri Bonnault went 1:01.77 in 100 Breast LCM. Which is an outstanding swim from him. But getting a US Olympic Trials Cut might not relevant because we believe Mr. Bonnault competed for France in international competition within the last year. More on that later.
Emory Senior Jake Meyer finished that 100 Breast LCM in 1:02.23 which is an agonizing 0.04 seconds off the Olympic Trials Cut. We can’t know how frustrating that was for him. But he did end this morning with a 52.04 Breaststroke leg in the 400 Medley Relay Prelims, kicking the crap out of all the other breaststrokers in the pool. If he was swimming angry, it didn’t work against him.
Qualifying times for the Olympics must (it seems) be recorded in meters, as per international standards, typically in 50-meter long course pools.
Meets that enable US swimmers to achieve these qualifying times are monitored by certified officials from USA Swimming to ensure adherence to national and international standards.
The officials are there to observe the race and the circumstances surrounding the events, including the electronic timing systems (which don’t always work as designed). That said the timing systems are what we are all used to seeing - touchpads and sensors in starting blocks. There are a bunch of regulations about how the touch-pads are to be set up for the actual Olympic Trials, but it is not clear that those regulations apply to meets like the one held yesterday.