Poland could not have possibly screwed up more when it came to its Olympic swimming team.
Poland sent 23 swimmers to the Summer Games in Tokyo this year. However, six swimmers had to be sent home because they did not qualify based on FINA’s qualifying rules.
Poland’s swimming federation had to apologize for the epic blunder in a statement. PZP president Pawel Slominski said:
"I express great regret, sadness and bitterness about the situation related to the qualification of our swimmers for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Such a situation should not take place, and the reaction of the swimmers, their emotions, the attack on the Polish Swimming Federation is understandable to me and justified."
Alicja Tchorz, Bartosz Piszczorowicz, Aleksandra Polanska, Mateusz Chowaniec, Dominika Kossakowska and Jan Holub were identified as the swimmers sent home from the Olympics.
“I am deeply shocked by what happened and this is an absurd situation for me that should never have happened. In fact, I hope to wake up from this NIGHTMARE eventually! In a word, I am terribly embittered and I am sorry that due to incompetent people from PZP, he is in Poland and not the capital of Japan,” Chowaniec wrote on Instagram (according to Google Translate).
Tchorz also sounded off over Facebook (translation via Google Translate):
“Imagine that you devote 5 years of your life and strive for the next start at the most important sports event, give up backbreaking training, give up your private life and work, sacrifice your family, etc. Your dedication results in a total flop. Six days before the grand finale, it turns out that you have been stripped of your dreams due to the incompetence of third parties. It’s hard to collect my thoughts, and there are several hours left to pack my suitcase.”
It’s hard to imagine a bigger or more damaging mistake coming from a country’s Olympics administration. What an awful fate for the swimmers who were sent home after having their hopes up.
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