New Competition Pathway to better support swimmers’ progression.

In line with the vision to continually develop our sport, a new competition pathway has been created to support our swimmers in a long-term, steady, and healthy manner of development. Please find attached the updated calendar and the new qualification guidelines for your reference.

The primary objective of these changes is to further promote the sport uniformly across a variety of abilities while enhancing the competition environment with the intent of reducing the competition stress from our swimmers, parents, coaches and clubs.

The following points provide insight into understanding how the pathway was developed:

• All competition qualifications have been devised to try to provide swimmers with an opportunity to participate in at least one meet with the hope of also providing them an equal opportunity to improve their capabilities, in order to continue their progression to the next meet level.
• Qualification timings have been set based on an average of UAE meets over the past few years and the performance of our athletes.
• Meet titles - Development, Competitive, Performance and International Level have been chosen for a collective ease of understanding.
• Standard age groups have been established for each meet, one age group for Development and Competitive level meets and mixed age groups for the Performance and International Level Meets.
• The qualification times will be evaluated on a yearly basis (January) for a potential upgrade (maximum 5% increase of challenge level) to ensure that the overall performance of our community evolves proportionately from season to season.
• In order to provide a range in the number of competitions as well as to ensure sufficient time between each competitive level, the calendar has been created to be based on 6 development competitions, 5 competitive competitions, 4 performance competitions and 2 international level competitions throughout a single season.

All of the above points have been taken into consideration to try to engage as many swimmers in each competition as possible in an attempt to comfortably keep athletes in the water for as long as possible while decreasing training pressures, the need to win or the fear of performing poorly compared to peers and/or other swimmers with different abilities.

I hope that everyone will see this as an exciting opportunity for all of us to develop our swimmers collectively and to create a healthy and stronger competitive environment. However, for any change to be successfully implemented, it always requires the help and support of the full community. Therefore, I would like to suggest that your team begins to consider how to review and place your swimmers now so that over the next few months, you have ample opportunities for all of your swimmers to compete.

Overall, the new competitive environment will help to contribute to increased swimmer happiness, which potentially improves ability and ultimately sport longevity.

I remain accessible to anyone who may have individual questions or potential ideas for further discussion and consideration.

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