Pan Pacific Swimming Championships
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The Pan Pacific Swimming Championships is a long course swimming event first held in 1985. The meeting was initially staged biennially, however from 2002 became a quadrennial event. Participating nations include the four Charter nations: Canada, the United States, Australia and Japan. In addition, several other non-European countries are invited to participate including China, New Zealand and Brazil. The meet is considered to be one of the toughest international swimming competitions outside of the Olympic Games, World Championships and European Championships, due in part to the presence of swimming power-house nationals like Australia and the United States.
The meet was last held in Victoria, British Columbia. 2002's competition was staged in Yokohama, Japan and 1999's in Sydney, Australia. Unlike the World Champs and Olympic Games, nations can enter as many people as they like in the preliminaries of each event (in most international meets, only two swimmers from each nation are permitted). However, only two swimmers per nation can qualify for the Pan Pacific Championships' semi-finals and finals.
