USA-based top T&T swim­mer, Dy­lan Carter is in favour of next year's In­ter­na­tion­al Swim­ming Fed­er­a­tion (FI­NA) World Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onships and World Mas­ters Cham­pi­onships in Fukuo­ka (JPN) be­ing staged be­fore the Tokyo Olympic Games which were post­poned from Ju­ly of this year to Ju­ly 24 to Au­gust 8, 2021.

On Mon­day last, FI­NA, the world gov­ern­ing body for wa­ter sports not­ed that they were still work­ing on an up­dat­ed date se­lec­tion for the 2021 FI­NA World Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onships, which was forced to move giv­en their over­lap with the new dates for the 2020 Olympic Games.

The bian­nu­al event was sched­uled from Ju­ly 16 to Au­gust 1st, 2021, which now con­flicts with the dates that the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee will use to host the 2020 Olympic Games: Ju­ly 23rd to Au­gust 8th, 2021 af­ter the event was de­layed by a year be­cause of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

The IOC was forced to move the Olympic Games as the re­sult of the glob­al coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic that has now sur­passed 1.3 mil­lion con­firmed in­fec­tions and al­most 74,000 deaths

A sur­vey sent to in­ter­na­tion­al-cal­i­bre ath­letes pro­posed four pos­si­ble make­up dates for the event with ath­letes across the six ma­jor dis­ci­plines gov­erned by FI­NA be­ing asked to give their pref­er­ence on the new dates for the 2021 World Cham­pi­onships.

Ac­cord­ing to Swim­Swam, the FI­NA Ath­lete Com­mit­tee has dis­trib­uted a sur­vey to par­tic­i­pants in swim­ming, open wa­ter swim­ming, artis­tic swim­ming, div­ing, high div­ing and wa­ter po­lo to gauge their opin­ion on when the Cham­pi­onships should be held.

The four op­tions giv­en to the ath­letes in­clud­ed- March/April 2021, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Olympic Games, af­ter Tokyo 2020 in Sep­tem­ber/Oc­to­ber and some­time in 2022.

Oth­ers in­clud­ing the lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee, broad­cast­ers and Na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions are al­so set to be con­sult­ed be­fore FI­NA makes its fi­nal de­ci­sion.

World Ath­letes which was al­so set to stage their World Cham­pi­onship in Ore­gon, USA next year from Au­gust 6 to 16 have al­ready post­poned their event un­til 2022, and among the na­tion­al swim­ming fed­er­a­tions first to re­spond pub­licly was Swim­ming Cana­da who called on FI­NA to fol­low suit, claim­ing hold­ing the World Cham­pi­onships in 2021 would cre­ate "many chal­lenges".

How­ev­er, speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports from his San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, Los An­ge­les, USA based, Carter, said on Tues­day he would pre­fer to see the FI­NA World Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onship come off in March/April 2021 from the four pos­si­ble op­tions.

Carter who won a 2018 Com­mon­wealth Games sil­ver medal in the 50 me­tres but­ter­fly said he re­ceived the sur­vey from FI­NA last week and filled it out.

"I be­lieve there were three or four op­tions for the 2021 FI­NA World Cham­pi­onships which are go­ing to be in Japan as well, one was March/April, the oth­er im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the Tokyo Olympics, one for Sep­tem­ber/Oc­to­ber, and then 2022, ex­plained Carter who got bronze medal win­ner in the 50m but­ter­fly at the 2018 FI­NA Short Course World Cham­pi­onships in Hangzhou, Chi­na, the sec­ond ever for T&T.

"But af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion with my coach David Marsh I chose the March/April op­tion for the FI­NA World Cham­pi­onships most­ly be­cause it gives me a short­er time hori­zon on some­thing to work to­wards as I would look for­ward to com­pet­ing in a year at a "Big Cham­pi­onships" which is ex­cit­ing for me, ex­plained Carter a sil­ver medal win­ner at the 2013 World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in the 50 me­tres but­ter­fly and the 2014 Youth Olympic Games, and a bronze in the 50 me­tres freestyle.

De­spite their Grand Prix events and World Cups swim­ming legs world wide, the 24-year-old Carter, a 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Games bronze medal­ist in the 100 me­tres back­stroke stat­ed; "As swim­mers and top-lev­el ath­letes we all love to com­pete and for it to be soon­er for me that gives me some­thing ma­jor to look to­wards and some­thing to fo­cus on as well as be­ing a great tri­al run for the Olympic Games be­cause it's in Japan as well, and the World Cham­pi­onships will be about four months be­fore, so it will be a great place to go and kind of fig­ure out where you stand and what you will need to fix a cou­ple of months be­fore the Olympics."

A for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia stand­out and NCAA swim­ming cham­pi­on Carter al­so spared a thought for the vet­er­an ath­letes of the sport who may be con­tem­plat­ing end­ing their ca­reers with one more ma­jor event like the Olympic Games, "I know a lot of old­er ath­letes might want to re­tire af­ter the Olympics and may not want to con­tin­ue af­ter Au­gust and hav­ing to ex­tend their ca­reer es­pe­cial­ly af­ter hav­ing the Olympic Games post­poned from this year, so hav­ing the World Cham­pi­onships be­fore the Olympics would work in their favour as well."

The 2013 T&T "Ju­nior Male Ath­lete of the Year" and NCAA Cham­pi­on as a mem­ber of the 800-yard freestyle re­lay, Carter added, "So I think they to will be hop­ing for a World Cham­pi­onship ear­ly on in the year in March/April/May, but at the same time, there are some peo­ple who are say­ing oth­er­wise as they don't want to have to fo­cus on the FI­NA World Cham­pi­onships be­fore the Olympic Games, which may pose as an added pres­sure on them.

Carter who has qual­i­fied to com­pete in the 100 freestyle next year in Tokyo said he will be sure­ly do­ing a cou­ple of warm-up events on the cir­cuit, in ad­di­tion to the World Cham­pi­onship should it be con­firmed for March/April.

In gen­er­al, he al­so praised the ef­forts of FI­NA to have the ath­letes more in­volved in the de­ci­sion mak­ing for the World Cham­pi­onship say­ing: "I'm glad that FI­NA is let­ting us ath­letes have a say or at least tak­ing the ath­letes say in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, and I am op­ti­mistic that it will be brought ear­li­er in the year 2021.

"Out­side of the sport I am al­so hop­ing that we will al­so get through this covid-19 or­deal soon­er rather than lat­er and all get back to train­ing and hope­ful­ly every­one will be able to do so in a healthy man­ner"

With his move­ment and train­ing sched­ule lim­it­ed to his home pool, Carter stat­ed, "like most of the world and ath­letes as well, we are cur­rent­ly on lock­down in here in San Diego.

"Be­fore the lock­down, I was train­ing here with my coach (David Marsh) who was the head coach of the 2016 USA Olympic Swim­ming team and we were here in heavy prepa­ra­tion for what was ex­pect­ed to be the Tokyo Olympics Games in Au­gust, but un­for­tu­nate­ly as we all know the Games have been post­poned for a year.

"So cur­rent­ly we are all un­der lock­down here so not much go­ing on, but I am still try­ing to stay in shape and work­ing to­wards my goals as best as pos­si­ble, and be­ing pro­duc­tive at this time by sharp­en­ing my men­tal skills and vi­su­al­i­sa­tion and what not."

The FI­NA up­date made no men­tion of the 2020 World Short Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships, which have been award­ed to Abu Dhabi, UAE and are sched­uled for De­cem­ber 15 -20.