Sweden Publishes New Qualifying Criteria for 2022 Euros and LC Worlds

The Swedish swimming federation released their updated qualifying procedures for the major 2022 international meets on Wednesday. The Swedes had an extremely successful Short Course World Championships last month in Abu Dhabi, coming home with 12 total medals, including 4 gold and tying the world record in the women’s 4×50 medley relay. The Scandinavian country will now try to build on that success in long course, with the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan in May and at the European Championships in Rome, Italy in August. 

2022 Long Course World Championship Qualifying Criteria

In order to qualify for the World Championships, swimmers must achieve at least one of the above time standards, which are equal to the FINA A cut. New qualifying times must be achieved at a FINA approved competition between March 1st and April 12th, 2022, with the preliminary roster announced on April 12th and the final roster being announced on May 1st.. 

Sweden has also made a provision for swimmers who qualified for the finals at last summer’s Olympic Games to be pre-nominated to the roster, meaning they do not have to hit qualifying standard during the qualifying window. Those swimmers include Louise Hansson (100 fly), Sophie Hansson (100 breast), Erik Persson (200 breast) and Sarah Sjostrom (50/100 free, 100 fly). 

Sweden may also elect to add additional swimmers to the roster after the qualifying window closes, especially when considering high level junior swimmers, though countries cannot enter more than two swimmers in each event. 

The qualifying time standards are little-changed from Sweden’s standards for the 2019 World Championships in South Korea, but are noticeably slower than the time standards set to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which were faster than the FINA A cuts in all events. 

2022 European Championship Qualifying Criteria

Sweden’s European qualifying times are equivalent to the 16th place finisher at last summer’s European Championships in Budapest, and the top four swimmers in each event who hit the qualifying times will be eligible to be named to Sweden’s LC Euro’s team.

Most of the qualifying standards are faster than last year’s 2021 Euro’s standards, and the qualifying period is June 1st-July 4th, with additional supplemental swimmers being added by July 10th. The preliminary squad will be announced on July 5th, with the final squad announced following the addition of supplemental swimmers.  

Similar to their World Championship qualifying procedure, all members of Sweden’s World Championship team in May will be automatically pre-nominated to the Euro’s squad, meaning Sjostrom, Persson and the Hansson sister are already qualified given their pre-nomination for the World Champs team. 

With the lighter qualifying conditions for Euros, it is likely that Sweden will field a larger, more complete team for the end of summer meet when compared to their World Championship squad.