At the Danish nationals in Copenhagen this week, national head coach Nick Juba announced a new program called Olympic Hopefuls, aimed at those ‘genuine Olympic contenders’ that have made the Danish qualification times for Rio 2016, or are very close to making them.
See the qualifying time standards here on svoem.org. Swimmers representing Denmark (or in Pál Joensen’s case Faroe Islands) at the Kazan 2015 World Championships are automatically selected, while others can qualify by making the time standard established from the Danish Olympic Qualifying Times for Rio 2016 plus 1.5%.
At the moment, the hopefuls consists of the 7 Danish swimmers selected for Kazan who are based in Denmark, plus Pál Joensen the Copenhagen-based Faroese swimmer who can compete for Denmark at the Olympics. In addition to these, Julie Kepp Jensen made the time standard at the Baku 2015 European Games, while Anton Ørskov Ipsen made the time standard during the just finished Danish nationals. 4 US-based swimmers are apparently not included in the program.
They are as of now planning to take a selection of the hopefuls to a kick-off camp in Cyprus in September, and a warm-weather camp in Bermuda in January-February 2016. After April 2016 they will probably run a couple of alternatives, so that different people can do different things.
See also the video interview with Danish national coach Nick Juba on svoem.dk.
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