A Requiem Season For An Ailing World Cup & Making Quantity King & Queen Over Quality

Editorial

The World Cup is done for another year. No-one starved but neither was this a season of plenty in the short-course pool. In fact, it was the weakest world-cup showcase in the history of such events going back to the days before FINA harnessed it as a potential highlight and pay day for swimmers and swimming.

The series limped to an end today in Hong Kong, with Katinka Hosszu (HUN) and Vladimir Morozov (RUS) the winner’s of the overall $100,000 prizes for women and men respectively.

There was another very solid effort, of 14:18.53, from Ukraine’s Mikhail Romanchuk in a 1500m free that provided the highlight of the curtain-closer. Among other more solid efforts the right side of 950 points, with many others making the podium with far fewer than 900-point swims at a time of training,  Alia Atkinson (JAM) clocked 29.20 in the 50m breaststroke and Chad Le Clos (RSA) 49.52 in the 100m butterfly.

Thank goodness it is over this Olympic season.  The cup is a failed product that needs removing from the shelf.

Why does it not work? Why is it that the bulk of world-class swimmers, coaches and programs opt out not in? Is the money to blame? Should swimming throw more at it? Is the format to blame? Should it be changed? Is the timing of events in a confused calendar that can with some ease be described as catastrophic (as in “extremely unfortunate or unsuccessful”; awful, lamentable, miserable” and so forth) at fault?

Does swimming beyond the Olympic Games, World Championships and the better known regional showcase games and championships have an identity? If so, what is it – and who benefits? Who is it all aimed at?

These and many more questions are what ought to be occupying the minds and time of swimming’s leadership – but don’t hold your breath. The warning signs, including swimmers voting with their feet, hands, cap and goggles, have been there for a long time.

For yet one more season, the big prize – $100,000 – for top woman goes to Hosszu. I can’t say how many that’s been (four, maybe five in a row) nor is it the stuff of great score, nor is the concept of iron ladies of the pool. The iron lady (that term first used by a Russian colonel to described the stance and approach of Margaret Thatcher in 1976) of swimming 2013 to 2016, Katie Ledecky, has never been on world cup tour, the 2016 winner of which has taken all time and time and time and time again.

No offence, Katinka but the world is not particularly interested in watching the same training set quite so many times.

Swimming really cannot expect what’s unfolded to capture the public’s imagination. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame the Hungarian swimmer, nor any swimmer on tour: the World Cup may offer only modest sums of money for the vast majority but it is the only wage-earner offered by FINA beyond championship moments.

Hosszu is the winner in the works. She has turned up year after year, set about dismantling specialists on just about every distance on all strokes and come up trumps. Just how she does that is another conversation but suffice to say that in the form she has mustered since late 2012, the cards are, without a shadow of a doubt, stacked highly in favour of Hosszu (so much so that her dominance may even be deterring participation) and any others (can’t think of any just at the moment) who stretch to the speed she achieves across the entire world-championship program.

Adam Peaty by D’alberto-Pirroke LaPresse for arena

Conversely, the cards are stacked very much against anyone who excels at one or two things. Adam Peaty? Forget it. He produced the best swim of the year at just the right moment. Joe Schooling? Another Olympic highlight of Rio 2016? Neither Peaty nor Schooling could ever win the men’s prize at the world cup. No chance. Not even a hope of one.

And no interest either, as Peaty made very clear to SwimVortex of late. His ambition rests in Rio gone and Tokyo to come. Not every day can be nor must be an Olympic Games but all roads must lead to the pantheon that counts. The World Cup has proved to be a detour that the majority of the very best swimmers in the world are not prepared to make.

The points system, one that leaves the average and potential viewer frozen and wondering if they might have better things to do with their time, is overly complex and prizes quantity over quality when it comes to handing out the biggest prizes.

No-one is suggesting that there is no relative quality in a 4:33 short-course 400m medley among women and that with an edge when delivered as a cog in the big wheel of multiple-eventing in clusters over the course of three months – but swimming – and above all swimmers – must ask the following:

what is it the sport wants to reward? do you want a wider audience? do you want a wider catchment group of sponsors and backers? do you, the swimmer, want to become part of a professional network of elite swimmers? does your sport showcase your excellence in a way that makes swimming accessible and helps spread the word of an activity that transcends racing and health and entertainment, the wider …

continue reading in source www.swimvortex.com