Top 20 Most Significant Swimming Stories Of 2016: #13 – Masters, Servants & Subsidies

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016. 

We started with progress, the heights of Katinka Hosszu and  the Canadian Comeback, turned to a lack of progress in The Swimming Selfie, then considered inspiration and the impact of Michael Phelps on a generation knee-high when he was racing in his first Olympic final. Our list then turned to the theme that will not go away: doping and how to deal with it.

We’ll be returning to the topic later in our countdown but yesterday we considered the Australia/ China interface and questions of faith & fair dinkum. In parallel context, we then looked at the folk responsible for the environment of all the entries in the list above and most to come, too: FINA, an international federation that is, in all the wrong ways, same as it ever was. 

Next up, the ruinous nature of runes in an Olympic year that drove home the wisdom of Bob Bowman when he said: “Those who predict don’t know and those who know, don’t predict.”

Today, we consider the plight of swimming as a sport struggling to attract headline sponsors and looking to be bailed out by masters whose power – spending and grey – provides a glimpse of the future for blazers who have not yet got it: the governance structures of the sport, the pillars of bureacrat first, athlete second, have had their day.

No 13 – Masters, Servants & Subsidies

The European Championships in London last May: from my point of view as a journalists covering a fine elite meet, things went very well indeed. Take your eye off the water and look at the books: a financial disaster. The elite event was bailed out by a surplus floated over from Masters, from UK Sport and from British Swimming. No headline sponsor stepped in. The whole thing incurred a loss – and the folk manning the buckets to make sure the leaky boat didn’t sink were the very Masters swimmers who endured a far from satisfactory event that failed to deliver on the promise of a great experience at the London 2012 Olympic pool.

The traditional model of governance and the way swimming pays its way in the world is entrenched: international federation seeks hosts, gets the money, the limos, the show, and shares a lion-sized bite of praise when it all goes well but takes little or no responsibility for when things go pear-shaped and carries not a cent of any loss that may be incurred. The contract holds the key.

Take that kind of format and apply it to a vast raft of issues that crop up with each passing event and you have the lock-breaking combination to understanding why swimming is a realm that could do so much better if it were not for the governance structures that hold it back.

Denmark’s Mie Nielsen at London 2016 – by Patrick B. Kraemer

The conversation twixt man in pub with a pint across the table from blazer with a bucket for his champagne lifestyle:

What? The event was a financial sink hole? You’d have to talk to the hosts about that. What? The companies investing in swimmers and providing a sea of suits and other kit in a heavily subsidised environment cannot use a logo nearly as big as the sign on a box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes? We have to respect the inegrity of our sport. What? The FINA family is staying in that five-star hotel overlooking the bay while the world-class athletes that have to get up and race stay in dormitories and three-star establishments in a different part and class of town? Of course: we’re busy and besides, we’re very important: if it wasn’t for us, none of this would be possible. What? The budget for per diems given to politicians and officials and various ‘volunteers’ granted a ticket to the blazerati amounts to more than the entire budgets for prizes given to swimmers? We see no reason to justify a token $300-plus a day to cover costs for our leadership; some of them are out on the road for well over 100 days a year, don’t you know. All of this is possible because of us. What costs? Isn’t that all covered, the business-class flight, the limo from the airport, the five-star hotel, the fitting and ownership of suits, shoes, ties, caps, hats, laptops and more and all food thrown in (excellent food at that – covered by rule C 17.9 under ‘hotrel expenses’)? Yes but people are giving of their time, taking time off work … and its only fair… Time? And effort and expertise, presumably, too? Yes, of course. So why not pay them a wage and make them responsible for their decisions, that standard model applied far and wide out there in the world of folk who work for a living and pay their taxes accordingly? That would never work. I mean, we’d fail all sorts of labour laws if we didn’t stick to rule C17: “Candidates for Bureau membership shall be proposed by the member from which they come.” Volunteers choose their own volunteers and that’s served us all so well for so long. Why would we wish to change that? What? Turkeys, Christmas, votes – see what you mean. But who pays for all this, anyway? Well, mainly city hosts and their taxpayers. What? I thought it was all ticket sales, entries and commercial sponsorship? No, that wouldn’t stretch to the kind of budgets we need. And besides taxpayers don’t even notice; they’re generally happy to come in, put on a great show and leave with everyone feeling happy with it all. What? Even if they’re in the red? That’s sport, old chap – and if they don”t like it, we’ll find some other city that’s happy to subsid… I mean, host us.

Or perhaps not. Swimming faces a watershed on governance and what it will take to stay truly afloat in the years ahead beyond the biggest of occasions, such as the Olympic Games, particularly if you want the sport’s best moments to unfold in places where there’s as live audience that appreciates swimming.

The worst reality in the above caricature belongs to some who occupy the house of FINA. The example we turn to today, however, focusses on Europe, LEN, British Swimming and the company created to run the European elite and masters Championships in London this year. The whole thing incurred a loss, while the money of Masters was used with funds from taxpayer-funded bodies in the UK to bail out the elite side of the sport.

If the below is happening in London, you can guarantee it is happening in many other places.

The questions raised form the following tale include:

What must swimming do to become …

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