Dolphins to retain April trials in Adelaide after swimming world championships delay

Swimming Australia will retain its April selection trials in Adelaide amid a global reshuffle in aquatic sport following the postponement of the FINA World Championships, which had been scheduled for May in Japan.

What would have been a mammoth year for the Dolphins now has a gaping vacancy before the July-August Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, which now shape as their major meet of the year after Japanese organisers pulled the pin on the proposed me -19 concerns。

It was hoped the World Championships would provide a blockbuster reunion of Tokyo headliners like Katie Ledecky, Ariarne Titmus, Kyle Chalmers and Caeleb Dressel, to name a few, but that won’t happen on the global stage until midway2

The Australians will now focus all of their energies into the Commonwealth Games and stick with an April trials, even if the schedule since Rio had been adjusted to hold trials around six weeks out from major events.

It has been a most successful formula, a mirror of the American model, with record returns at the Tokyo Olympics the result of what had been a major adjustment to the trial and racing format.

Dolphins head coach Rohan Taylor said 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.

“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,” Taylor said.

“We thought about putting a trials on in June and not in April. But there are quite a few athletes in work primed to peak in April and get that winning spot. If we take that away, what are the consequences there? So we want a trials meet in April. We are picking junior worlds, world uni Games, so we will honour that first place selection.