2024 is officially an Olympic and Paralympic games year! The Paralympics will take place in Paris just a few weeks after the Olympics have concluded, but before that, the 7 World Series will commence between February and June, in time for the 2024 Games.
The locations for the 7 World Series include Aberdeen, Great Britain (2/1-4), Oceania, Australia (2/23-25), Bella Italia Village, Lignano Sabbiadoro (3/14-17), Indianapolis, USA (4/11-13), Singapore, Asia (5/17-19), Berlin, Germany (5/30-6/2), Limoges, France (6/7-9), Guadalajara, Mexico (11/21-24), and finally, Cairo, Egypt (12/6-8). Citi Para Swimming partnered with Toyota for a second year to bring the World Series to the Indiana University Natatorium, the largest permanent swimming competition facility in the United States. The facility was incredible, and as only swimmers usually say: the 50m pool felt fast!
This year will mark my 4th year competing in the World Series. However, unlike previous years, this will be the first time I have competed in both prelims and finals. Since the World Series is an international meet, an international classification is required to participate in finals- something I’ve only acquired recently at the 2023 Ken Demchuk International Invitational. There was a total of 201 athletes from 17 different nations, and all 14 classifications were represented.
As a brief review, physical disabilities are classified from S1-S10, 1 being the most impaired while 10 being the least. Similarly, visual impairments are classified S11-S13, while S14 is reserved for intellectual impairments. Each event in the meet is a mixed class, and results are determined by World Para Swimming (WPS) points. Finally, there are different time standards to be in the emerging team, then the national C team, B team, and the A team.
Training times beforehand included April 8-10, so I arrived Tuesday night with one day left to prepare for the meet, which lasted from the 11th through the 13th. I had made the emerging time for women’s 100m freestyle for S9’s with a time of 1:12.85 at Ken Demchuk, but I needed a 1:09.65 to make a C time. Although I did not swim that, I still dropped time in prelims and finals, with a final time of 1:11.37. I also dropped a little over 2.5 seconds in my 100m backstroke with a final time of 1:25.29.
For Riley Bosler, an 18-year-old S10, this was her very first World Series. She said, “I was definitely nervous with this probably the biggest meet I’ve ever been to, but I tried to not have super high expectations going in and to just have fun and enjoy the experience of being at a meet on this level for the first time. I think I was more excited to just meet new people and swim with some of my friends.” Riley swam the 100m freestyle, 200m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 50m freestyle, and 200m Individual medley (IM). When asked how Riley felt about her swims, she said, “I was very happy with all of my swims because I really didn’t know where I was going to be at after the rush of high school season and my training before the meet, but I dropped time in all of them! I didn’t expect that- but the 400 free was definitely my favorite, I love that race!”
Riley had never been to this meet before, so she said, “I definitely thought it was going to be a lot more intimidating with it being a world series and ‘international’ meet but I was happy to see that it was for the most part a pretty easy going meet! everyone I talked to was so nice and people were so supportive of each other and that made me feel a lot more confident when going into my races. I would definitely recommend this meet to any para swimmer interested, I think it was a great experience.”
Overall, Colombia’s Paralympic champion, Nelson Crispin Corzo, set a new world record in the men’s 100m breaststroke S6, and a second world record was also broken by Canada’s Sebastian Massabie in the men’s 50m butterfly. Ten out of 24 podiums were led by Team USA athletes with a total of 10 golds in 24 events, and Mexico took home 7 gold medals.
Personally, the meet had its highs and lows, but was an incredible experience regardless. Up next, the 2024 U.S. Paralympic Team Trials!
