We believe this new “Canadian Way” is cutting edge, based on thorough consultation over eight months with carded coaches, Athlete Advisory Council and other national team athletes, coaches of carded* athletes, provincial executive directors and technical leads, high performance staff, technical experts and performance science staff.

Some points to highlight:

• We are offering a balance of events in Eastern and Western parts of country.
• We considered very carefully the placement of Trials and went into deep discussions with our carded coaches and sport science staff, looking at the performance data including training periodization. This work and the carded coaches discussions showed the strategy of a later Trials, including junior finals, was the right direction for swimming in Canada. The junior final at our Trials has been implemented very successfully the last two years.
• We are developing and growing a Canadian Open in April to provide strong domestic competition, it starts in 2024 and will grow from 2025 to 2028.
• We are creating a 25m championships on the back of a long-course summer that should be very fast. This keeps the nation swimming and allows senior swimmers to continue on to a fast end-of-summer event. It will also offer an opportunity to post 25m pool times to qualify for short-course worlds, an increasingly prominent international event.
• The calendar allows and encourages provinces to provide quality long-course summer championships, thereby reducing travel costs and adding another layer of quality events across the country for the masses.

This effort will deliver events that are good for all in Canada, and requires carded swimmers to attend a very minimal requirement of three events i.e. the Open, the Trials and the short-course championships.

After the consultation with all parties and making the decisions ahead of time it’s an exciting time for coaches, athletes and provinces to work ahead to support the national strategy they helped to create.

In short we’ve consulted, we’ve delivered on what we said last year that we would do, now all can make their plans and go for it. The sky’s the limit!

(*FYI “carded” refers to athletes who receive funding from the Sport Canada Athlete Assistance Program)