For Top Swimmers, Spots On Team USA Come Down To Fast Finishes At This Week’s Paralympic Trials — Plus A Little Math

Two months from now, the country’s top Paralympic swimmers will chase their dreams in Paris.

It will mark the end of the shortened “quad,” the correction on the flip side of the long “quad” that was actually five years leading up to the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some athletes, Paris will have been just three years since they last competed on the sport’s biggest stage.

And the quest to get to the City of Lights officially begins Thursday in Minneapolis with the start of the three-day U.S. Paralympic Team Trials at the Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center on the University of Minnesota campus.

This year the U.S. qualified 33 spots for the Paralympics: 21 women and 12 men. That’s down from 34 in Tokyo; although Team USA lost a couple of women’s spots, it added two on the men’s side.

And while not all 33 spots are realistically open, there will be some competition among the 87 athletes slated to compete in Minneapolis.

“There are definitely a good handful of open spots on both sides,” U.S. Paralympics Swimming Director Erin Popovich said. “The women’s side has a little more depth, but the men’s side does have some up-and-coming guys who helped us qualify those two additional slots. And it’s trials. We’re not sure what’s going to be thrown down, but we are looking forward to some fast times.”

In order to even be considered for the team, athletes have to meet criteria including minimum qualifying standards (or MQS) and participation at certain events leading up to trials. Then, while results at trials certainly matter, with 14 different classifications for both men and women it’s not as simple as the first two to the wall get the spots. There’s some math involved. Team leadership will take the results from trials and create a formula to compare them to the standard of third place in the Paris MQS world rankings, then begin to fill slots based off that team selection ranking list.

There will also be a few places for discretionary picks, which also have to meet certain criteria, such as in the case of an athlete experiencing illness or injury that doesn’t allow for maximum performance at trials, if their inclusion could positively impact medal potential in a relay or a trend of improving performance. The full selection procedures can be found here.

That said, there are certain athletes who come into Minneapolis knowing they’re likely headed to Paris next.

Jessica Long, for example. One of the most decorated U.S. athletes of all time, the 32-year-old, 29-time Paralympic medalist will be going for her sixth appearance at the Games. Veterans Mallory Weggemann, McKenzie Coan and Evan Austin will be going for their fourth Paralympic Games. They’ll no doubt be joined by a number of athletes who made their debuts in Tokyo, such as world record holders Anastasia Pagonis and Morgan Stickney, and are now looking to experience what the Games are like with spectators there to cheer them on.

And of course there will be athletes who’ve burst onto the world scene in the years since Tokyo, such as Olivia Chambers and Noah Jaffe, and are now looking to make their first appearances on the Paralympic stage.

Popovich was a three-time Paralympian and 19-time medalist herself, with 14 of her medals being gold. She still remembers being at the IU Natatorium in Indianapolis when she learned she made her first Paralympic team in 2000.

After the trials end on Saturday, the committee will meet to work through the slots and fill the team, then deliver the news to the athletes Sunday morning.

Which, she said, is both wonderful and wrenching.

“It’s incredibly exciting to get to see the triumphs and announce their achievements and name the team that will represent us and carry us through these Games,” Popovich said. “But it’s also heartbreaking knowing that athletes have given it their all and everything to make the team, and not all make it. That’s the hard part. So it’s a mix of emotions.”

The trials run Thursday through Saturday. Find ticketing, live streaming and other information here. A public team naming ceremony will take place at 9:30 a.m. central time on Sunday.

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.