Positive COVID-19 tests on both the French and Croatian swimming teams at the European Junior Championships in Rome forced both teams out of the preliminary sessions on Friday, according to a source.
The two teams were allegedly put into quarantine, and neither had any swimmers compete during the fourth preliminary session. Croatia had 11 total no-shows, and France had seven.
A second source has told SwimSwam that a total of five positive cases were reported among the two teams. According to the restrictions in place, each team member was then considered a close contact and were subjected to quarantine and to be re-tested.
Due to the pending test results, the teams were forced to miss the preliminary session on Friday. The test results ended up coming back negative, the source says, so they were false positives (though one is reportedly still being re-checked), and the teams were subsequently released from quarantine on Friday afternoon.
During the finals session, France’s Justine Delmas and Croatia’s Lovro Serdarevic then competed as scheduled, with Delmas winning gold in the women’s 200 breaststroke and Serdarevic placing fifth in the men’s 50 backstroke.
If now false positive tests prevent swimmers from competing or if for one positive test the whole team is not allowed to compete it’s gonna be a nightmare in Tokyo.
Frenchwoman 15-year-old MAM was not able to swim in prelims yesterday while she would have easily won the 50 back gold medal. She must be very mad.
Just to be clear, were they ALL false positives? Rather strange, no?
Is this going to be the procedure in Tokyo? If someone test positive, the whole team sits out the session waiting on test results?
That’s gonna be a NIGHTMARE.
I said it elsewhere, but while the messaging says otherwise (via a quote from Mintenko, as best I can tell), the conference calls we were on last week say yes to your question.
Steve Nolan does have a point, though, so maybe there’s some grey area in those protocols that was “suggested” to USA Swimming….