USA Swimming announced today that they would be allowing “bonus swims” at the next stop of the Grand Prix Series in Mesa, Arizona that will run from April 11th-13th.
After previously having changed qualification times for the event, USA Swimming has tweaked the rules so that swimmers with 1 cut time can have as many bonus swims as they want at the meet. This is in contrast to the previous rules, which were only allowing swims in events for which swimmers had qualified.
This should open up the opportunities to swim at this meet for a whole new range of swimmers who may not have been willing to commit to the travel costs for just 1 or 2 entries.
Early impressions from meet organizers are that this meet will have a decent number of swimmers. Estimates of entries so far put them at somewhere between 300-400 swimmers, with several college teams expected to enter still.
They should just let everyone get a second swim. Then everyone would have two chances for a best time!