Quick answer
Sign in to Gophin (free), select Compare → Standards, and pick the standard (for example USA Swimming Motivational Standards, Swim BC Provincial Championship, or Swimming Canada National) and the category (age, gender and level). Every event shows your swimmer's best time next to the cut and the gap in seconds, with a count of how many events are ahead and behind. Times update after official results are published, not on the blocks.
Rafa wanted to know how close she was to a provincial cut. I checked manually across three websites, cross-referencing age groups and pool types. That night I started building the standards comparison in Gophin, because no parent should have to do that math by hand.
You know your swimmer's best times. But do you know how those times measure up against official standards? Knowing that the 200 freestyle is 2:08 is one thing. Knowing that 2:08 is three seconds away from the cut for your swimmer's age group changes which meets you enter and what you take to the coach. It does not set the workout.
Gophin's Compare → Standards screen lines up your swimmer's times against 60+ official time standards from the US, Canada and Brazil. No PDFs. No cross-referencing tables by hand. This tutorial walks you through every step.
Before You Start
Sign in (it is free). Two screens deal with standards:
- Times → Standards shows the published cuts themselves, for browsing.
- Compare → Standards matches your swimmer's actual best times against those cuts. This is the one this tutorial covers.
Step 1: Open Compare → Standards
On a phone, select Compare in the bottom bar. You will see four options:
- Standards: your times against official cuts
- Swimmers: two swimmers side by side
- Seasons: this season against last season
- Compare Groups: a group of swimmers together
Select Standards. On a computer, open Compare → Standards in the side menu. The page is called Swimmer vs Standards.
Step 2: Pick the Swimmer
The screen uses the swimmer you have selected. To change it, open Filters (select the bar under the pool buttons) and use the swimmer picker: your favorites are listed first, and you can type at least three letters of a name to find any athlete.
Gophin brings in that swimmer's best times automatically. You do not type anything.
Step 3: Pick the Standard and the Category
Still in Filters, choose:
- Standard. The standards the swimmer tracks (marked with a star) appear first, then the rest of the official sets for the swimmer's country. Select the star on any set to track it.
- Category. Gophin picks the one that matches the swimmer's age and gender, for example 11 Girls AA in USA Swimming Motivational Single Age, or 11-12 in a provincial championship set. Change it to look at the next level up.
- Gender and Season of the standard, if you need to. The most recent season of the standard is selected by default.
What is available (see our guides on Swimming Canada standards and USA Swimming standards for what each set means):
- USA Swimming: Motivational Standards (B, BB, A, AA, AAA, AAAA), Motivational Single Age, Sectionals, Futures, Winter Junior, Junior National, Summer, Open and National Championships, Spring Cup and Pro Swim Series
- Swimming Canada: National, East Coast Championships, Western Region Championship, Best of the West Fest and Para (Canada does not use the US letter scale)
- Canadian provincial sets: Swim BC, Swim Alberta, ManSask, Manitoba, Swim Ontario, the Quebec Swimming Federation, New Brunswick, Swim Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland & Labrador
- Brazil: CBDA national championships and the São Paulo (FAP) and Minas Gerais (FAM) state federations
Want a set from another country, say a Canadian swimmer racing a US meet? Open Time Standards, switch the country filter, and track it. Tracked sets appear at the top of the Standard list.
Step 4: Read the List
Each row is one event in the standard, in one pool:
- Left: your swimmer's best time in that event.
- Right: the cut for the category you picked.
- The difference, in green when the swimmer is already under the cut and in red when they still need to drop time.
Above the list, a summary line gives the number of events, how many are ahead of the standard, how many are behind, and the percentage already made. On a computer, the right side shows the same numbers under Overall Progress and Success Rate, plus the details of the event you click.
Three things worth knowing:
- A dash means the swimmer has no time yet in that event.
- "conv. from SCY" (or SCM, LCM) means the best chance against that cut is a time swum in another pool, converted with standard factors. Some meets accept converted entry times and some do not, so check the meet's rules before counting on it.
- Pool buttons (SCM, LCM, SCY, All) and stroke icons narrow the list. If the standard only has one pool, pick that one.
If you added your own times in Custom Times, turn on Include my custom times in Filters to see them in the list.
Sign in and open Compare → Standards to see your swimmer's gap to every cut.
Step 5: Turn the Gaps Into a Plan
The list is not just a checklist. It is a planning tool.
Identify Strengths
Look for events where the swimmer is already under the cut, especially at a higher level. Those are their strongest events relative to their age group. Championship entries often come down to picking your best events, and this view makes that decision straightforward.
Find the Closest Gaps
The most useful rows are the near-misses. If a swimmer is half a second away from an AA cut in the 100 butterfly, that event becomes a priority target. Take the gap to the coach. They decide the work. The list only shows the seconds.
Pick Two or Three Cuts, Not Twelve
Instead of "get faster this season," pick a real number. "Drop 0.8 seconds in the 200 IM to hit the A standard" is specific. Choose two or three event cuts with the coach. Then, in Times → Splits → Find time, type the cut as the target time: Gophin shows the gap to the target and which split is lagging most.
Practical Tips
Check Before Big Meets
Before a championship or qualifier, open the exact standard for that meet and see which events are close. It helps with event selection: pick the events where the swimmer has the best chance of making the cut.
Watch the Gaps Close Over the Season
New official times update the list on their own. Come back every few meets. Watching a 1.5-second gap shrink to 0.4 over a season is one of the most satisfying things in competitive swimming.
Compare Different Standards
A provincial championship and a national meet ask for very different times. Switching the Standard in Filters takes seconds and shows where the swimmer sits on each rung of the ladder.
Use It With the Coach
Instead of asking "what should we work on this season?", open the screen together and ask "we are 0.6 seconds from the AA in the 100 back, is that realistic this season?" It grounds the conversation in facts.
Is Your Swimmer Ready for the Next Level of Meet?
The list is most useful when families ask the big question: are we ready to move from local meets to regional, provincial, state or national ones?
When Rafa made her first BC Provincials cut, the whole family went quiet for a second and then erupted. She had been grinding at local meets for two years. What made us confident it was real, and not a lucky swim, was that the gap had been closing across several meets before it finally flipped.
Signals that a swimmer is ready for a higher level:
- The cut is close in more than one race. One hero swim under the standard is great. Two or three swims within a few tenths of it, in the same event and pool, mean the level is repeatable.
- More than one event is close. A swimmer near the cut in two or three events will get more out of a bigger meet than one who qualified in a single event by a hundredth.
- You are using the standard that matches the meet. A provincial or state championship has its own cuts; national meets have theirs. Pick that exact set, not the nearest letter standard.
- Prelims and finals both count. At bigger meets, the time that matters may come in the morning. Look at both rounds, not only finals.
In Canada the usual climb is club and regional meets, then provincial championship cuts (Swim BC, Swim Ontario and the other provincial sections), then the Western Region or East Coast Championships, then national meets such as the Canadian Open and the Canadian Swimming Trials. Our Swimming Canada standards guide explains each step; in the US, see the USA Swimming time standards guide.
One warning: moving up usually means racing faster fields, and the swimmer may place lower for a while even while their times keep dropping. That is the price of the climb, not a step back.
Quick Recap
- Select Compare → Standards (Compare → Standards on a computer).
- Check the swimmer in Filters.
- Pick the Standard and the Category (age, gender, level).
- Read each event: best time, cut, and the gap in green or red.
- Pick two or three close cuts with the coach, and test them in Find time.
- Come back through the season as new results load.
Knowing exactly where your swimmer stands is the difference between hoping for a qualifying cut and planning for one. For how standards levels work in general, see swimming standards by age explained.
