Road to 2020 starts in pool

– A scattering of Rio Olympic medallists and a bevy of youngsters already looking toward the 2020 Tokyo Games will battle this week as the Short Course World Championships close out the swimming year in Windsor, Canada.

With superstar Michael Phelps retired – this time, he says, for good – and many more of the sport’s big names opting to take a breather after the rigors of the Olympic season, the championships that start today are a perfect opportunity for up-and-comers to establish themselves on the international stage.

After a 16-gold haul in Rio, the United States brings a 35-strong team featuring four individual medallists from Brazil.

That includes women’s 100m breaststroke winner Lilly King, but King won’t get a showdown with Russian Yulia Efimova, who has announced she will miss the championships with tonsillitis.

King beat Efimova to gold in Rio, and called out the twicebanned Russian over failed doping tests, stoking the controversy over revelations of Russian state-sponsored doping in an array of sports. That controversy hasn’t faded, with three anti-doping officials quitting the watchdog of world swimming body Fina in September saying their recommendations on whether Russian swimmers should compete in Rio were ignored.

Russia’s team of 29 is headlined by 2014 individual short course world champions Kirill Prigoda and Vladimir Morozov – who broke his own short-course world record for the 100m individual medley in August.

Other marquee swimmers include South Africa’s Chad le Clos (above), Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri, Canadians Penny Oleksiak and Kylie Masse, Japan’s Daiya Seto, and Spain’s Mireia Belmonte.

A whopping 23 world records tumbled at the last edition of the short course worlds in Doha two years ago. – AFP