Hi Everyone,

Whilst I know each State Association has been keeping you up to date with State based information, I am conscious that it has been some time since I provided an update from Diving Australia. My apologies for that.

DA, and I am sure I can speak for the entire diving community, is right behind Victoria in their efforts to contain the outbreak you face. We know it is incredibly challenging for Victorians and we wish you all the very best.

At a national level, we are in constant contact with national and international bodies to try and piece together what our national and international event program might look like for the foreseeable future. It is fair to say that it is a very challenging exercise given much larger worldwide problems.

With that said, I am now in a position to provide some updates regarding the Gold Coast FINA Grand Prix and the Elite Junior Championships which were postponed earlier in the year.

Unfortunately, we have made the decision in conjunction with FINA, that the Gold Coast Grand Prix is cancelled. This has been a great addition in recent years to our annual event calendar and we look forward to working with FINA and local partners to host this event next year.

With regard to Elite Juniors, I know many of you are keen to hear an update. Given the situation with regard to international travel, and moreover, the worldwide impact of COVID-19, DA has made the decision that we will not be sending a team to the World Junior Championships (if it goes ahead) scheduled for the Ukraine in December. Accordingly, the Elite Junior Championships (and selection trials for World Juniors) is cancelled.

We fully appreciate that this will be upsetting for many of you, (please ensure you talk to someone - your family, coach or feel free to contact me if you like - if you are upset) however athlete safety is of paramount importance and we are not able to be confident of athlete safety for World Juniors, nor do we think we would even be allowed to attend, given travel restrictions.

This does not mean that we will not be providing some competition options for 2020. We are currently formulating plans to have a national invitational style competition for both Age and Elite Junior athletes together. We are currently looking at late November for this event. We have been discussing the possibility of having this as a virtual competition, with competitors able to compete from a number of different pools with a centralised video judging function. Obviously this would negate the need for travel to an in person event, but would not have the associated catching up with athletes and friends from other locations aspect that is a highlight of national events.

We would like to get your views on what you would prefer we pursue (assuming that we can travel domestically in late November) and have set up a survey via the below link. We ask that you give us your feedback so we can move ahead with planning for an event later this year.

Survey

We are also exploring a New Zealand tour (possibly January next year) for Junior athletes and will come back to you when we have more information about the possibility of this going ahead.

Finally, we understand that cancellation of events makes selection for squads and teams challenging and that you may have questions about that. At this stage, we do not have all the answers for those questions but we are working on providing that information to you as soon as possible. This has to be worked through State by State so may take some time. We will be aiming to make things as fair and optimal as possible in challenging circumstances.

Thank you for your understanding of the above, and as always, if you had any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes to all of you,

David Bell

0413 310 114

david@diving.org.au