World Aquatics Says 2024 Paris Olympic ‘B’ Cut Swimmers “May Not” Qualify Due To Athlete Quota

Swimmers who have obtained the ‘B’ cut during the 2024 Paris Olympic qualifying period may not make the cut due to the athlete quota.

The athlete quota for Paris is smaller than it was for the 2020 Games in Tokyo. This summer will only feature 852 swimmers, 26 less than were allowed in Tokyo (878).

In addition to a lower quota, rules for universality changed earlier this year as athletes are not required for athletes to have competed at either the 2023 or 2024 World Aquatics Championships in order to be eligible for Universality for the Olympics. Universality allows for countries that do not have swimmers with ‘A’ or ‘B’ cuts to send 1 male and 1 female swimmer to the Olympic Games.

Universality swimmers have a higher priority than athletes who have ‘B’ cuts and are already represented by their country. There is still over a month for countries to submit their Universality applications as they are due by June 24th, 2024.

World Aquatics sent out this communication to countries that have athletes with ‘B’ standards:

“Dear National Federations with Athletes with Olympic Consideration Times (OCTs):

World Aquatics has been working diligently with the IOC and Paris 2024 on the athlete quota for Swimming in Paris (852 total athletes).  This quota, which is 26 athletes less than Tokyo in 2021, is composed of athletes qualifying via the following methods:

1. Olympic Qualifying Times (OQT)
2. Relays
3. Universality
4. Olympic Consideration Times (OCT)

As we are carefully calculating the overall numbers, it is apparent that we may be extremely close to the 852 with just the first three qualifying methods (above) and adding athletes via the OCT path may not take place.  This has long been a challenge at the Olympics, as it was similar in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

Our intention with this correspondence is to make you aware of the situation so that you, your athletes, coaches and administrators can best plan and manage expectations.

World Aquatics would like to invite your National Federation to a Teams call in early May in order to further discuss and explain this situation.  While we understand that this may be challenging for NFs (and athletes and coaches) to hear, we feel it is important to cover this topic and be as informative and collaborative as possible.

Thank you very much for your interest and attention to this matter.  We will be back to you in the coming days with a proposed date for this call.”

‘B’ cuts already got much faster for this Olympic cycle compared to those in the past as most cuts have a half of a percent difference for Paris.