World Aquatics Scraps Open Class at Berlin World Cup Due to Absence of Entries
World Aquatics on Monday announced that it has scrapped the Open Category for swimmers at the 2023 World Cup stop in Berlin for “no current demand.”
Swimming’s governing body was planning a pilot program to adopt the category, with the intention of allowing transgender swimmers, particularly transgender females, to compete.
The full World Aquatics statement:
“Distances in various events had been made available for the Open Category, introduced on a pilot basis following the adoption of the World Aquatics Policy on Eligibility for the Men’s and Women’s Competition Categories.
“The World Aquatics Open Category Working Group will continue its work and engagement with the aquatics community on Open Category events. Even if there is no current demand at the elite level, the working group is planning to look at the possibility of including Open Category races at Masters events in the future.”
The decision is a short-term move, with World Aquatics still keeping the door open to the Open Category in other contexts.
World Aquatics has evolved its position quickly on the matter in the last 10 months, from saying it was “too early” for the Open Category at a World Championships last December to undertaking the pilot project in August. But in the six weeks since then, there weren’t sufficient entries to the Berlin meet, to be held Oct. 6-8, to continue with it.
Important to understand that there was at best only 2 weeks for registration not 6 weeks.
That was if you had contacted the World Aquatics open category email, if you hadn’t done that the registration details were published on their website 3 days before registration closed.