u/ahjfcshfghb

TL;DR if you're a citizen of Chad, Kiribati, Liberia, Nauru, South Sudan or Tuvalu, this could be your chance.

At the Olympics, each country can send two athletes each in athletics or swimming without meeting a qualification standard. Every IOC member has participated in athletics (Bhutan was the last to do so in 2024), but I was surprised to learn that there are a few IOC members which have never participated at the Olympics in swimming.

• Belize, São Tomé and Príncipe and Somalia all sent swimmers to the 2025 World Championships so could make their Olympic debut in 2028.
• North Korea hasn't competed in swimming but they participate in other aquatics disciplines (diving and synchronized swimming). They last sent swimmers to the World Championships in 2017.
• Chad and Liberia are members of World Aquatics but have never once sent swimmers to the Olympics or the World Championships.
• Kiribati, Nauru, South Sudan and Tuvalu don't yet have swimming federations recognized by World Aquatics.

I'm not sure what the statuses of all these countries' swimming federations are or if they have some athletes we don't know about – but if you were for example a Chadian- or Liberian-American who can do 50 meters of swimming in a reasonable time, there's a chance it could change your life.

In 1980, BBC1's Nationwide program aired "Life Swap", which was a one-off four-episode miniseries that followed a similar format as the modern reality show "Wife Swap".

In the show, a teacher from Newcastle named Myra Robinson swapped lives with wealthy London aristocrat Julia Stonor. Just as in Wife Swap, the two wives lived with the other wives' families and followed each others' daily routines, and then came together at the end to talk about their experience. The main difference appears to be that here, the wives didn't get to impose their rules on the other families.

Surprisingly I haven't been able to find any clips of this and barely any 21st-century media coverage except this article which described it as the UK's "first ever reality TV show". This despite the fact that it is a notable part of UK and global TV history, and Robinson in particular became somewhat of a celebrity after the show aired.

LMW article: https://lostmediawiki.com/Life_Swap_(lost_BBC_Nationwide_mini-series;_1980)