The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has released the “Minimum Qualifying Standards” that will serve as one of two steps to earn a spot for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The system, which is vastly different than the qualification for the Olympic Games, will begin at the 2015 World Championship in Glasgow, Scotland.
Each athlete who earns a gold or a silver medal at the 2015 World Championships will earn one roster spot for their country. Those spots are allocated to the swimmer’s nation not the swimmer themselves. Each swimmer can only earn their nation one roster spot, regardless of how many gold or silver medals they earn in Glasgow.
Each nation can earn more qualifying spots by having athletes reach the MQS that were released this week. Any athlete who achieved an MQS performance at an IPC recognized competition between October 15th, 2014 and January 31st, 2016, but who didn’t earn a gold or silver medal at Worlds, earns their country a qualification slot. Again, these slots go to countries, not specific athletes, and no matter how many times an athlete hits this standard, they earn their team only one spot.
These first two steps will top off at 335 male qualifiers and 275 female qualifiers. When swimmers start medaling in multiple events in Glasgow, those extra spots will revert to the MQS step. If the number of MQS qualifiers surpasses the limits, then a formula will be used to determine the number of slots each country receives based on their world rank.
At that point, each country will have a number of roster spots that they will allocate as they deem fit. There are also an additional 5 male and 5 female athletes who can qualify based on selection from the IPC Swimming Bipartite Commission and will be used for either top athletes who for some extraordinary reason did not otherwise qualify, to ensure medal events have sufficient representation for viability, and to ensure representation of athletes with high support needs.