Champion Peaty hits out at FINA schedule

ADAM Peaty says swimming’s world governing body must change or it could curtail his career.

Olympic 100m breaststroke champion Peaty has previously outlined his ambition to continue to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, all being well.

There are many considerations over the length of Peaty’s career, but the state of the sport under FINA is high among them.

“If the sport is the way it is now, it won’t be sustainable for me to continue to 2028,” Peaty said.

“It becomes very rigid, almost tedious. ‘Why am I going to the same competitions ever year? Why am I doing the same format that I’ve been doing for the last 10 (years)?’

“It becomes ridiculously tedious and I don’t want to be involved in something when the governing body is not willing to change.”

Peaty’s criticisms of the inflexible FINA brought a response. The governing body for all aquatics disciplines said it will “improve and modernise” with an “innovative” competition to be introduced in 2019.

But Peaty, the 50m and 100m breaststroke world record holder, says athletes have not been consulted about new events.

“I’m not going to bash it until I’ve heard it, but the athletes haven’t had any input,” he added.

“They’re coming out with this new format and I know people on the athlete board and they (FINA) don’t even listen to them.”

Peaty does not want the issue to be a distraction leading into the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and called for FINA to now listen to swimmers’ concerns.

“FINA have an opportunity now to rectify their mistakes and start to listen to the athletes,” he added.

“Someone has to have a face to face meeting and say ‘what’s wrong? What do we need to do?’ But they haven’t offered that. Where does that put the athletes? Bottom of the food chain.

“As long as the athletes turn up they don’t care and unfortunately they have athletes in a choke hold because they can’t earn any money commercially. It’s a bit of a sticky situation.

“It’s not about the money, it’s about having what the athletes want.”