World Aquatics says 2024 Paris ‘B’ Cut Olympic swimmers “may not” qualify due to athlete quota

Swimmers who achieved the ‘B’ cut during the Paris 2024 Olympic qualifiers will not be able to make the cut due to the athlete quota.

The quota of athletes for Paris is smaller than for the 2020 Games in Tokyo. This summer there will be just 852 swimmers, 26 fewer than what is allowed in Tokyo (878).

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

Universality swimmers have higher priority than athletes with ‘B’ cuts and already represented by their country. There is still more than a month for countries to submit their requests for universality, as the deadline is June 24, 2024.

World Aquatics sent 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 athletes in total). This quota, which is 26 athletes less than Tokyo in 2021, is made up of athletes qualified through the following methods:

1. Olympic Qualifying Times (OQT)
2. Relays
3. Universality
4. Olympic consideration times (OUT)

As we are carefully calculating the overall numbers, it is evident that we could be extremely close to 852 with just the first three qualification methods (above) and adding athletes through the OCT pathway may not occur. This has been a challenge at the Olympics, just as it was similar at 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 better plan and manage expectations.

World Aquatics would like to invite your National Federation to a team conference call in early May in order to further discuss and explain this situation. While we understand this can be challenging for NFs (and athletes and coaches), 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 subject. We will contact you in the coming days with a proposed date for this conference call.”

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