FINA fails in its duty of care to swimmers

ALL the great work swimming’s world governing body FINA has done to restore its battered reputation has been ruined by one of the dumbest and ill-conceived decisions it has ever come up with.

After being exposed as an old boy’s club where a lot of executives were more worried about the generous perks they handed out to themselves than the way they treated their own competitors, FINA made a solemn pledge it would commit to serious reform.

And for a while it almost seemed like they were genuine about putting the interests of athletes first.

They increased prizemoney and grants to athletes, they brought in outsiders to shake things up, they agreed to set up new reform committees and athletes’ bodies. Heck, they even appointed women to the executive after ignoring females for the best part of a century. Even more surprising, FINA’s new leaders did what no other sport in the world was prepared to do when they bit the bullet and created a historical policy for transgender athletes.

But just when FINA had everyone fooled, they showed how completely out of touch they really are by insisting on holding the world championships in Qatar in 2024 — five months before the Paris Olympics, when athletes are in hard training. Forget the FINA spin that it was a contractual issue, because the real issue here is the wellbeing of athletes — which FINA promised to make its number one priority. And on that count, it has failed. Holding worlds in the scorching temperatures of the Persian Gulf is insane enough, but the timing is an insult to what the championships represent. It was bad enough that FINA went against the wishes of athletes and held a hastily arranged worlds in Budapest last month — resulting in the absence of swimmers who would almost certainly have won. But many more will be absent if the 2024 event in Doha — and it will cast a stain on the sport that will take years to remove.

It’s time FINA got serious about where its priorities lie.