Two members of the national swimming team, James Deiparine and Remedy Rule, will resume their Olympic qualifying bids this week.
Deiparine and Rule will join in the TYR Pro Swim Series set on March 3 to 7 at the North East ISD Blossom Athletic Complex in San Antonio, Texas.
Their efforts to gain Olympic qualification will continue after both got sidelined for at least a year due to restrictions imposed to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Philippine Swimming, Inc. officials have appealed to let the two join, after learning of the restrictions on foreign athletes headed to the Texas meet.
It will be recalled that Deiparine and Rule were two of the four Filipinos, who hit the Olympic Selection Time (OST-B) for the Olympic Games during the 30th Southeast Asian Games. The other two were Luke Gebbie and Jasmine Alkhaldi,
Deiparine did this after he took the Philippines’ lone swimming gold medal in the men’s 100m breast stroke event, before three others followed.
His OST-B of 1:01.46 went past the 1:01.73 “B” cut, putting Deiparine closer to the 59.93 “A” cut.
Rule clocked an Olympic Standard Time-B in the 200-meter butterfly and in the 100-meter freestyle events.
PSI officials said that the 28-year-old Deiparine has trained under former US Olympic coach David Salo, who is known to have handled Australian Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe.
On the other hand, Rule, who clinched a pair of silver and bronze medals in the SEA Games, continues to train with her former coaches at her school, University of Texas.
And it has been almost a year since Rule smashed the new national marks of 1:00.16 in the 100-meter freestyle and 2:09.58 in the 200-meter butterfly, respectively, at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Des Moines, Iowa.
Rule’s time in the 200-meter butterfly is within striking distance of the qualifying mark of 2:08.43 and within the Olympic “B” cut of 2:12.28.