Why does the Australian Swimming team hold Olympic trials so far out from the games?
I don’t know if you are a swimmer yourself – but it all has to do with something called a “taper”. Swimmers have to train so hard that they pretty much destroy their ability to swim fast during their training period. If you ever look at results from meets mid-season, they almost never go best times. The entire training is focused on the end of the season, when they bring down their yardage and swim much faster. (Brining the yardage down and resting is called tapering.) A taper only works after you swim very hard for long periods of time. If you don’t swim hard enough before it, you won’t swim well. A taper also only works for a week or 2. If you start to rest too long, you will start to loose the fitness you worked so hard for over the season. The idea of doing the Australian trials so long before the Olympics is because if they held it in June (or July when the US holds their Olympic Trails), very close to the Olympics, it would be so close that you would have to try and extend a tape
