The AUSTri swimming conundrum
Over the last few years, global triathlon talent identification has increased the focus on reducing swimming benchmarks. The performance requirement to be accepted into development pathways has continuously increased (faster times are needed), and many triathletes without a swimming background feel left out.
What seems unfair treatment at first glance turns out to be a wise decision well sustained by scientific literature.
To explain my support the recent changes, I have selected evidence from a recent study by Ruiz-Navarro & Born (2025) with a considerable dataset and high-level statistical analysis. The authors reviewed the performance progression of 13,310 males and 7798 female pool swimmers (9 to 21yo) in all race distances. The results were grouped by three performance levels and the progression inferred by linear mixed modelling—it’s a stats tool to estimate how much one thing influences the outcome of another. They looked at 3 main effects on performance progression,
The effect of age
The effect of the performance level
The effect of age combined with performance level
It turns out that in longer distances (400m to 1500m), age and not performance level resulted in the biggest interference to swimming progression. The results showed that the window of change per year drastically reduces with increasing age for both sexes. This percentage of change per year was very similar in each performance level.
Males of all levels from 9 to 15y observed a total increase in performance of around 30% in the 400m swim.
Females of all levels from 10 to 15y increased around 19% in the 400m swim.
Males from 12 to 15y increased around 16% in the 800m swim.
Females 12 to 15y increased around 10% when they were already top 800m swimmers and up to 12% when not as good swimming 800m.
This means that on average, all swimmers got better at the same rate independent of how good they were in the previous year. What comes as a shock is that from 15 to 19 years (Junior development stage), the values decrease drastically,
Males 15-19y averaged around 7% increase in the 400m and 8% in the 800m.
Females 15-19y averaged around 3.5% increase in the 400m and 800m.
This was independent of performance level during the total 5-year period combined. What calls attention is the standard deviation—it’s the maximal and minimal values between which most of the data sits; the individual variation of these values was quite significant and around ±2% per year.
This informatios suggests that moving between performance levels is doable but requires above-average effort. No one is doomed to only increase the average percentages of the average, but it takes considerable dedication to quality as all the swimmers included in the data were definitely putting in the volume and intensity. Keep in mind that we are triathletes and must also focus on cycling and running, and suffer the interference of those sports in swimming progression. Quality is the go to when you are in the pool. Add plenty open water skill acquisition sessions and you will see yourself closer and closer to the lead pack before T1.
The take-away information expressed in the performance pathways selection policy is that the older you get, the harder it becomes for you to achieve significant increases in swimming performance. It also means that if you wait too long to work on your efficiency, the increase might not be sufficient—no matter how much you dedicate at an older age. It is not so simple for >19y triathletes coming out of the water far from the front pack to just "train swimming" more. The gain is very small, and the dedication required will interfere with the progression of cycling and running that tends to highly-increase from 19-23y.
Triathlon Australia has set new the performance benchmarks. The new athlete selection policy is not unfair, far from it, the new benchmarks show evidence-based work was done by the team. One step at a time, Australia will hopefully see a triathlon medal outcome in Brisbane 2032.
Ruiz-Navarro, J. J., & Born, D.-P. (2025). Annual Performance Progression in Swimming Across Competition Levels and Race Distances. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 10(3), 297. https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk10030297
