Canada Artistic Swimming announces that its Canadian Championships will be held virtually in 2021. The event, which was scheduled to take place in Quebec City on May 2-9, 2021, will now feature pre-recorded routines that will be webcast and judged live on June 15-20, 2021.
“We established early on in the fall a series of guiding principles to help guide our decisions for this competition season, the paramount one being Safety First,” mentioned Stéphane Côté,” Director of Events at CAS. “Unfortunately, with the rise of variants, the slow vaccine rollout and the general uncertainty about how we could handle having so many athletes gather at the same place for an event, we came to the conclusion that there was no safe way to hold our Nationals in person this year.”
With safety restrictions being vastly different from province to province, and some clubs still not being allowed to train in the water at all, the new event date is meant to give more clubs the opportunity to enter the competition and finish the season on a positive note. Clubs will not have to stretch their season that far if they don’t want to, as video submissions will be allowed to occur as early as they want.
As with its National Qualifier, scheduled to take place virtually on April 7-11, special rules and accommodations will be put in place for the National Championships to allow all clubs to participate regardless of the provincial restrictions they fall under, including having to stay distanced from teammates, limited number of athletes in the pool, less pool space, etc. This will also include the ability to enter in special dry land events for clubs that might not have
Canada Artistic Swimming would like to thank Natation Artistique Québec and Québec Excellence Synchro, who have now seen the event they were supposed to host be cancelled 2 years in a row. We hope to be able to return to Quebec City for an event in the near future.