‘FINA Targeting Rio 2016-Scholarships Programme’ – few mores chance to achieve B times before the Games

Nine intensive months into the “FINA Targeting Rio 2016 – Scholarships Programme”, Head Coach Miguel Angel Lopez, and other key staff working at the Thanyapura Centre Thailand with the scholarship holders, produced the first two reports of the year.

The evaluation reports, produced every two months, make an in-depth individual analysis of the athletes’ improvements and highlight their strength and weaknesses over several months.

Most of the young swimmers (16 in total) have secured a spot in the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro (BRA) in accordance with the universality principle that is part of the Olympic Charter. 

Athlete Sajan Prakash of India achieved a B-standard time, while another one, Kimiko Raheem of Sri Lanka, was 0.2 second away of achieving it in the 50m freestyle.

With very few determining months ahead of them, a series of events taking place in Asia will represent additional opportunities for the athletes to qualify with a B-standard time for the Games. An example of an event which was recently held in Shah Alam Selangor (MAS) was the 59th Malaysia Open Swimming Championships from 5-8 May.

Programme participants’ times’ evolution will be available on FINA website after the last qualifying opportunity.

In the meantime, FINA decided to take a look at the recent history of the participants’ respective countries. The tables below provide figures for the most important events in swimming from the FINA World Championships (odd years) and FINA World Swimming Championships (even years), to the Olympic Games.

Bangladesh

Cambodia

India

Maldives

 Myanmar

Nepal

Sri Lanka

Thailand

Timor Leste

Vietnam

Read more about the programme here