USA Swimming Announces World Championships Selection Criteria; 50-Meter Winners to Receive Higher Priority
USA Swimming has revealed the procedures for qualification onto the 2025 World Championships team. The national governing body will bring up to 26 female swimmers and 26 male swimmers to the next edition of World Aquatics’ signature event to be held next summer in Singapore, with the pool swimming events set for July 27 through August 3. American swimmers will be selected based on their results at the U.S. National Championships, to be held June 3-7 in Indianapolis.
Click here to view the full selection criteria.
Swimmers who place first in individual Olympic event will be automatically named to the team, as will the top-four finishers in the 100 and 200 freestyle for relay purposes. Second-place swimmers in individual Olympic events will have second priority for making the team, with all of those individuals almost certain to be selected once enough swimmers have qualified in multiple events.
In a change from the 2023 World Championships selection criteria, the third priority will go to the winner of non-Olympic events, which include the 50-meter races of butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke. The fourth priority for selection are the fifth-place finishers from Nationals in the 100 and 200 free, and the fifth priority includes swimmers who place sixth in the 100 and 200 free. If there is a tie, a swim-off will be conducted.
In 2023, relay alternates were given preference over the fifth and sixth-place swimmers in relay events, and that resulted in Michael Andrew being left off the team despite winning the 50 fly at Nationals. Andrew had one last chance to make the team before finishing third in the 50 free, one hundredth outside of the second spot, and he was left off while all top-six relay swimmers were taken.
Traditionally, enough swimmers qualify for Worlds in multiple events to ensure that anyone in a possible selection spot will be named to the team, but that has not been the case for the U.S. men in recent years. In 2021, Ryan Held was left off the Olympic team bound for Tokyo despite finishing sixth in the 100 free at Trials, and Andrew’s exclusion came two years later.
At the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, the sixth-place finishers in the 100 and 200 free had to wait until the last possible moment to ensure their spot on the Paris Olympic team, not officially receiving their invitations until Bobby Finke claimed a spot in a second race at the Games with his final-day Trials win in the 1500 free. If not for Thomas Heilman upsetting Dare Rose for the second spot in the 100 fly, either Matt King or Blake Pieroni would not have made the team.
Other important points from the selection criteria include:
- If there is another roster crunch, USA Swimming may be forced to break ties between swimmers who fit into the same priority (i.e., the sixth-place finisher in the 100 free against the same finisher over 200 meters). In that case, swimmers will be selected onto the team based on “the highest percentage of ‘A’ standard for the event for which they qualify for selection until a maximum of 26 swimmers for that gender are selected to the team.”
- Two swimmers must reach the “A” qualifying time in order to swim an individual event at Worlds. If two people do not swim an “A” cut in the final of an event at Nationals, USA Swimming will pick the highest-finishing swimmer(s) who previously notched the cut.
- Additionally, if a swimmer who places top-two in the 100 or 200 free withdraws from the individual event but remains on the team, the third-place swimmer from Nationals will race the individual event at Worlds, but a seventh swimmer will not be called up to join the team. Two years ago, Anna Peplowski was added to the Worlds team after Katie Ledecky chose to drop the individual 200 free from her program, but that rule was amended prior to last year’s Olympic Trials. However, it ended up not mattering in 2024 as Simone Manuel placed seventh in the 200 free before qualifying for Paris in other events.
- Most if not all winners of 50-meter stroke events will qualify for the team, but a possible second entry into the event at Worlds will be offered to swimmers who qualify in the corresponding Olympic event (i.e., the 100 back for the 50 back). Thus, a second-place second in a 50-meter race does not give a swimmer the ability to race the event in Singapore, even if they are on the team in other events.
The full National Team selection procedures also outlines what makes a swimmer eligible to qualify for the World Championships and gives procedures for possible removal and replacement of athletes on the team.
