Among the best elements of Olympic swimming is the mix of occasions with comparatively easy-to-guess winners alongside different occasions which have wide-open fields the place many swimmers might take house a gold medal. The swimming portion of the Olympics has been completed for a few week now, so let’s take a dive again into the entry lists to see which occasions caught true to their preliminary rankings, and which of them deviated from the unique prime eight.
There are three designations subsequent to a swimmer’s title beneath the Olympic entry lists: Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT), Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), and Universality (U). From World Aquatics: “OQTs correspond to the time achieved by the 14th place within the respective preliminary heats of the occasion in Tokyo 2020. All OCTs have been derived by including 0.5% to the OQT time customary.” Learn extra in regards to the Paris qualifying requirements right here. Universality swimmers are usually not sure by any kind of qualification occasions, however are allowed to swim within the Olympics as a consequence of their nation not reaching the OQT or OCT in any occasion. In keeping with olympics.com, “Universality Locations are a lifeline to athletes from underrepresented Nationwide Olympic Committees. They’re designed to extend the variety of collaborating nations throughout the sports activities programme of the Olympic Video games.” Whereas it’s unlikely we’ll see any universality swimmers on the rostrum within the close to future, not a lot else actually embodies the Olympic spirit than seeing almost each nation compete collectively within the pool.
The Olympic Consideration Time is the rarest designation seen within the entry sheets, because it has final precedence by way of qualifying. If there are nonetheless open spots (contemplating the 852-athlete quota set by World Aquatics) after the entire OQT and Universality swimmers have been entered, then the following quickest OCT occasions shall be entered till the quota is reached. this yr’s video games, all of the swimmers that certified for a remaining had achieved an OQT of their occasion. Whereas we didn’t see any swimmers with the OCT qualify for a person remaining, it’s nonetheless attention-grabbing to see the lower-seeded swimmers succeeding within the pool.
Via taking the preliminary rankings of all of the swimmers of their respective finals and averaging them, the bottom doable worth an occasion can have is 4.500. That is assuming that every one swimmers, ranked first by eighth, all made the ultimate, with no swimmers exterior the preliminary prime eight incomes a lane. Whereas many occasions have been near this, we solely noticed it occur in a single occasion: the ladies’s 200 freestyle. (Ariarne Titmus, Mollie O’Callaghan, Siobhan Haughey, Yang Junxuan, Barbora Seemanova, Claire Weinstein, Mary-Sophie Harvey, and Erika Fairweather have been the highest eight seeds going into the Olympics, and so they all made an look within the remaining of this occasion). That being mentioned, the nearer an occasion is to 4.500, the nearer the occasion sticks to its entries. The upper the typical quantity, the extra swimmers from exterior the highest eight certified for the ultimate. Listed here are the lists and graphs of the typical seeds from the entry lists in contrast with the Olympic finals:
The ladies’s occasions caught more true to the unique top-eight rankings than the lads’s did, and the 100 freestyle, 200 freestyle, and 100 backstroke of each genders gave the impression to be very protected bets for everybody’s Choose ‘Ems. Past these occasions, there doesn’t appear to be any instantly seen correlation between the occasion and the swimmers who qualify. The boys’s occasions appeared to be extra variable than the ladies’s, with the highest-average males’s occasion (200 fly) coming in at an 8.875, almost a full rank greater than the averaged 7.750 seen within the girls’s 100 breaststroke.
FUN FACTS
On the ladies’s aspect, all top-seeded (and, curiously sufficient, all fourth-seeded) swimmers going into the Olympics made the ultimate of their occasion. On the lads’s aspect, prime seeds Sam Quick (800 Free) and Qin Haiyang (200 Breast) each missed the finals. Either side noticed over 10 second- and third-seeded swimmers make finals.
Lowest seeds to win:
Tatjana Smith: Ladies’s 100 breaststroke, Gold Medal (seeded fifth)
- Tatjana Smith was seeded fifth within the girls’s 100 breaststroke, over a second off of top-seeded Tang Qianting. The reigning silver medalist on this occasion and the gold medalist within the 200 breaststroke swam just below her seed time to take the gold medal, bettering her entry by 4 locations.
Kristof Milak: Males’s 100 butterfly, Gold Medal (seeded sixth)
- Milak, in the same boat to Smith, was the silver medalist within the 100 butterfly in Tokyo and the gold medalist within the 200. Whereas the space between first and sixth was lower than a second, Milak beat the 5 swimmers seeded forward of him in a subject of 40 swimmers to take house the gold.
Lowest seeds to medal:
Apostolos Christou: Males’s 200 backstroke, Silver Medal (seeded 18th)
- Christou improved by a whopping 16 locations from his seed time, dropping a second and a half en path to his silver medal.
Ilya Kharun: Males’s 100 butterfly, Bronze Medal (seeded thirteenth)
- Ilya Kharun accomplished the bronze-medal double with the 100 and 200 butterfly final week. The specialist dropped over half a second from his seed time of 51.09, eclipsing 10 swimmers to position himself on the rostrum within the 100 distance.
Emma Weyant: Ladies’s 400 IM, Bronze Medal (seeded eighth)
- Weyant took off one other half-second from her seed time within the 400 IM, inserting third in opposition to a really tight subject to win her second Olympic medal within the 400 IM.
Meg Harris: Ladies’s 50 freestyle, Silver Medal (seeded eighth)
- Harris swam a lifetime finest within the finals of the 50 freestyle, cracking beneath the 24.00 second mark to win a silver medal. She was seeded eighth coming into this yr’s video games.
Lowest seeds to make a remaining:
- David Aubry, Males’s 800 freestyle: seeded twenty fifth
- Neza Klancar, Ladies’s 50 freestyle: seeded twenty third
- Kregor Zirk, Males’s 200 butterfly: seeded twenty first
- Naoki Mizunuma, Males’s 100 butterfly: seeded twentieth
- Alina Zmushka, Ladies’s 100 breaststroke: seeded twentieth
- Fei Liwei, Males’s 400 freestyle: seeded nineteenth
- Apostolos Christou, Males’s 200 backstroke: seeded 18th
- Anastasia Shkurdai, Ladies’s 200 backstroke: seeded 18th
- Leonardo Deplano, Males’s 50 freestyle: seeded 18th
- Kuzey Tuncelli, Males’s 1500 freestyle: seeded seventeenth
- Ella Ramsay, Ladies’s 200 IM: seeded seventeenth