Australia poised to snatch one of Putin’s prized sporting events
The grubby game of Vladimir Putin’s shameless ‘sportwashing’ is up with Australia poised to snatch one of his prized sporting events and bring it Down Under.
Swimming
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Australia is on the verge of snatching one of Vladimir Putin’s prized international sporting events that has been taken off Russia as punishment for invading Ukraine.
High-level talks are still continuing but the Sunday Telegraph can confirm the next shortcourse world championship will be held in Australia.
It will be the first time the shortcourse world titles, held in a 25m pool instead of the usual 50m, have been awarded to Australia so is a major coup but will infuriate the Kremlin.
This year’s edition was originally due to take place in Kazan, Russia’s fifth largest city but swimming’s world governing FINA stripped Russia as the host nation after dozens of national swimming federations — including Australia — declared they would boycott the event as a show of solidarity to Ukraine.
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Neither FINA or Swimming Australia has made any formal announcement about the event but when asked by The Sunday Telegraph, FINA did confirm that talks had already begun.
“FINA is pleased to confirm that it is in advanced, exclusive discussions with Swimming Australia to host the 16th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in December 2022,” FINA said.
“Both FINA and Swimming Australia expect to announce more details on the exact location and dates of the event in short order.”
Regarded as one of swimming’s crown jewels, securing the championships is another feather in the cap for Australia in the long build-up to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics, even though Putin will be fuming.
The Russian dictator has shamelessly tried to align himself with major international sports events — a practice known as ‘sportswashing’ — but the game is up with swimming one of the first Olympic federations to slam the door on any Russian involvement.
It is understood that Russia and Belarus will both be banned from competing at the shortcourse world titles in Australia although individual athletes can apply on a case-by-case basis.
One Russian swimmer who definitely will not be allowed to compete is Olympic backstroke champion Evgeny Rylov.
He has been suspended until the end of 2022 after appearing on stage — wearing the infamous “Z” symbol of Russian nationalism — at one of Putin’s pro war rallies last month.
Where’s the money? Swim stars short-changed by new event
As glittering as they are, Olympic gold medals just don’t pay the rent for Australia’s best swimmers.
The same Dolphins who reinvigorated Australia during the worst of last year’s pandemic with their inspiring performances remain among the most underpaid athletes in the country.
But the times may finally be changing, albeit slowly, starting with a head-to-head clash against America’s superstars in Sydney later this year.
It’s the latest reincarnation of the Duel in the Pool, but this time there will be a wad of cash on offer, although the organisers were shy about revealing how much, and it’s little wonder.
The combined prize pool for the showdown with the star-studded Americans, plus a second sprint competition that will stretch the races out to a week, is a paltry $200,000.
And that’s to be split between more than 60 of the world’s swimmers, who each train for around 30 hours a week.
As Americans say, do the math, because the money on offer is below minimum wage and a pittance to other sports where less talented athletes wouldn’t get out of bed for anything below a seven-figure sum.
It’s a brutally shocking reminder just how poorly elite swimmers are paid, but the most damning revelation is that this is a rare windfall.
“It‘s actually a lot of money for us,” Swimming Australia Eugenie Buckley told News Corp.“
But we’re working on changing that so there‘s a number of things we want to do.
“First of all, we want to make sure we can give more opportunities to our swimmers to swim and get rewarded for it.
“And we want to attract new audiences.”
Although some of the sport’s biggest names have made a good living from spending their lives soaked in chlorine through a mix of funding, prize money, sponsorship, reward schemes and a new professional league, most elite swimmers end up with little to show for their work because the global administrators spent most of the profits on their own lavish lifestyles.
That all changed last year when FINA was shamed into major reform and the benefits are now starting to flow into Australian waters, though there’s a lot of catching up still to do as Buckley explained.
“We still don‘t have a major partner for swimming yet,” she said.
“So we’re really hoping that this event will help us sort of kickstart those conversations around sponsorship. We‘ve had some good traction.”
To get things moving again, Swimming Australia has made some key personnel changes, recruiting not only Buckley, but also Tracy Stockwell as the new president, and former Sydney Sixers’ general manager Jodie Hawkins to head up the commercial and marketing department.
Taking a leaf from the Americans, they have ambitious plans that are now being put in place, including transforming the vastly underplayed Olympic trials into the massive prime-time event it should be, staged at marquee venues.
“We‘re always looking for content and new ideas, so we’ve gone out to each of the states and all the state tourism bodies to present our vision for working with them,” Buckley said.
“One of the things we will do is tender for our Olympic trials in 2024, so we’ve already gone to market with that.
“Once we get our finances sorted our absolute dream is a drop-in pool at Rod Laver Arena or somewhere like that because you have all that LED signage around the outside, and it‘d just be brilliant.”
Just as critically, Swimming Australia is now also working closely with FINA about creating a new global calendar because the current one is a complete mess, with events overlapping or being held out of season in countries with little or no swimming tradition.
And that could produce a massive windfall for Australia.
Buckley has been included on a FINA event review committee and with Brisbane hosting the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics, one of the most likely spin offs is that world championships could return to Australia in the next decade.
“There‘s a whole lot of different people on the committee, saying how can we look at this, how can we make it better,” Buckley said.
“So they‘re starting with new events, getting the product right, getting your marketing right and selling their story better as well, and I think what they’ve got to do is what we’re doing.”
Pro-war Olympic champ banned as Russian backlash escalates
Following in the slipstream of Wimbledon’s controversial decision to ban Daniil Medvedev and other Russian and Belarusian tennis players from the London tennis grand slam – a champion Russian swimmer has landed himself in even hotter water.
Evgeny Rylov – who won gold medals in both the men’s 100 metres and 200m backstroke finals at last year’s Tokyo Olympics – has been suspended for nine months by swimming’s world governing body for his fanatical support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
An outspoken and vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin, Rylov incurred the wrath of swimming officials after appearing on stage at a pro war rally that the Russian President attended in his homeland last month.
Rylov was among a group of Russian athletes who turned up at the rally wearing the infamous “Z” symbol of Russian nationalism on their jackets.
FINA’s disciplinary committee was unimpressed by his unrepentant behaviour so promptly threw the book at him, booting the 25-year-old out of the sport for the rest of the year.
In announcing the nine-month ban, FINA also reaffirmed that Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials will not be invited to any FINA event for the remainder of 2022, including the world championships, starting in Budapest in mid June.
As the rules currently stand, athletes cannot compete under the flags of either Russia or Belarus but unlike Wimbledon, it is not a blanket ban, meaning there is some wiggle room for some individuals to compete but decided on a case-by-case basis. Rylov won’t be allowed.
After years of pandering to the Russian dictator, FINA has moved quickly to distance itself from him, stripping Putin of its highest individual honour, which he received after Kazan hosted the 2015 world championships.
This year’s junior world titles were due to take place in the same southwest Russian city but were relocated to Peru after several countries including Australia said they would boycott.
A double world champion, Rylov is no stranger to controversy. He lost his sponsorship deal with Speedo immediately after attending the rally and was also embroiled in a thinly-veiled doping row at the Tokyo Olympics.
The first Russian swimmer to win Olympic gold in a quarter of a century, Rylov’s performances came under scrutiny when American Ryan Murphy, who finished behind him, was asked whether he thought he had been beaten fair and square.
“I’ve got about 15 thoughts, 13 of them would get me into a lot of trouble,” Murphy said.
“It is a huge mental drain on me to go throughout the year that I’m swimming in a race that’s probably not clean, and that is what it is.”
Rylov has never failed a doping test but with Russia banned from competing at the Olympics as punishment for state sponsored doping, he was forced to race under the acronym ROC or Russian Olympic Committee.
Originally published as Australia poised to snatch one of Putin’s prized sporting events
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