Spot The Missing Swimmers: Why Windsor Will Fall Shy Of The Best Swimming Can Be

Editorial

The World Short-Course Championships get underway in Windsor, Canada, tomorrow. Six days to go until the FINA circus packs up at the end of a woeful years for the international federation.

Whether be design or default, FINA simply could not prevent the participation of dopers at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Many would argue that FINA simply didn’t want to. In word, FINA would argue with the latter; in deed, however, there’s no hiding place for an organisation led by a director who hugged Sun Yang* on the Olympic deck a year after declaring “you can’t condemn the stars for a minor doping offence” and he did so even as the world of swimming around him descended into the biggest protest in Olympic swimming history, the backdrop to racing in Rio the boo, the jeer and the rejection of the depth of deception that has poisoned the pool for many a long year.

Thirty years after he took up as top paid man at FINA in the midst of the second decade of the GDR’s State Plan 14:25, Cornel Marculescu leads a cultural malaise.

The fact is that if you don’t condemn such things, if you tolerate such things, if you apply one rule for Sun and Co and another to the unknown athlete from Thailand and elsewhere, you get a breeding ground for cheats.

The issue ripple well beyond doping, of course. Watching FINA from within and from afar is like watching small boys play cars, each with a favourite for whom the rules will be bet to suit the outcome less won than given.

Don’t get me wrong: no doubting the score of Katinka Hosszu this year – three Olympic gold medals and a silver.

Did that merit the FINA woman of the year award going to the Hungarian? Most definitively not.

Katie Ledecky (USA) – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Katinka Hosszu by PBK

Woman swimmer of the year? Only one choice: Katie Ledecky. The American claimed Olympic gold in the 200, 400 and 800m freestle and with teammates in the 4x200m freestyle, in which she played a pivotal role. In the 400m and the 800m, stunning world records that represented the biggest points scores among all new standards set by women this year.

Ledecky’s was a flawless Olympic campaign, a performance like no other in Rio for an American who since she started an unbroken winning streak with Olympic gold in the 800m freestyle at 15 in London four years ago has failed to win FINA approval over its constant choice and enrichment of Hosszu.

The only argument for selectiong Hosszu over Ledecky would be to count the world cup and other s/c competitions pertaining to FINA. Here again, however, FINA is hoisted by its own petard:

1. Michael Phelps, FINA male swimmer of the year, was never a promoter of world cups nor short-course peak racing … and yet, and yet, how deep to go before you get to the swimmer of the year if not Phelps… onward past Peaty and Schooling and Horton and a bunch of others FINA cabnot turn to to find world cup promoters and beneficieries, Hosszu the very biggest of those and now not only in possession of FINA’s biggest cash rewards but its big honorary prize, too. 2. The showcase s/c event this year is yet to take place – but won’t count for FINA honours, the dinner and the clock of blazers worth more than the duel and the clock of clocks to those governing the sport.

It remains to be seen whether Hosszu’s star will continue to rise in the FINA firmament. At home, she has been an outspoken critic of the man in charge of the Hungarian federation, namely Tamas Gyarfas. The dispute reached a head last week when Gyarfas resigned in response to Hosszu’s call for him to do so. His style of management, the secrecy implied, the lack of transparency in voting and in finances were all apsects cited by Hosszu as untenable.

Where then is her voice when it comes to FINA, the body granting her so many prizes? Gyarfas is FINA Vice-President. Just where the loss of the headship of Hungarian swimming will leave him next July when Budapest hosts the FINA Congress on the eve of the World Championships proper (long-course) remains to be seen. The new leadership of the Magyar shoal has the right to nominate its own officials. Gyarfas, who runs the FINA Aquatics Magazine in a very lucrative arrangement with the international federation, may yet be able to remain in an honorary capacity.

He may also yet make a comeback, as he did after the scandal of 1996 when Hungary made up a whole meet after realising that it needed some decent qualification times to enter the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Gyarfas noted that he had had nothing to do with that exercise. Still, captain, ship. Not a train of thought, it must be said, that holds much truck at FINA, a body that we have yet to hear Hosszu criticise. Time will tell how all of that works out.

In the meantime, FINA clearly realises that its two short-course events, the World Cup and the world s/c titles, are struggling. The federation has sought the views of swimmers on what might improve the world cup. They will not, however, want to hear the truth: kill it and start again.

That FINA nerves are a touch on edge over the world s/c titles is obvious in the words of Peter Hall, FINA “head of broadcasting and marketing”.

There is no arguing, not even from FINA and any other wise monkeys you care to …

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