The BASE TIME PROXIMITY STANDARD is used to calculate the times and ranking of athletes to be selected for attendance at international off-island Flag Event competitions which limit the number of athletes that may be entered, such as the World Aquatics Championships.
The standard uses a mathematical formula sometimes called the “Highest Ratio” formula or the “Percentage Faster” or “Percentage of Time” Standard. Variations of the standard are used by World Aquatics and major swim federations as a way of establishing a uniform way to compare times and to rank athletes across different individual events. Regardless of which variation of the formula is used, the result is that a fair comparison can be made between differing athlete times and events.
The Base Time Proximity Standard compares the difference between an athlete’s best time in an individual event to the “B” time standard (ie, the “Base Time”) for that same event as established by a competition’s meet organizers. The formula divides the athlete’s time by the Base Time, and the quotient is converted to a percentage. The resulting percentage represents how much faster or slower the athlete’s time in an event is compared to the “B” time in that same event
The athletes are then ranked in order of their percentages. with the highest ranking athlete being the one whose swim time is closest to the Base Time (or “1.000”).
The Base Time Proximity Standard does not apply to the Olympic Games or to open entry competitions which do not have a pre-established limit on the number of entries (e.g. the Micronesian Games or the Pacific Games). For such competitions, athletes must athletes must equal or better the minimum posted qualifying time in one or more 100-meter individual events in order to be preliminarily qualified for consideration to participate. Athletes may swim 50-meter events at the competition.
For the Olympic Games, the qualification and selection criteria are established by World Aquatics. If no athlete achieves the qualifying time, then at the sole and exclusive discretion of World Aquatics and GNOC, and subject to any other applicable criteria, the male and/or female athlete who has achieved the highest World Aquatics Points Table score in an individual Olympic qualifying event during the relevant qualifying period may be invited to the Games.