Billionaire Konstantin Grigorishin steps up to guide elite swimmers towards Tokyo Olympic Games
Aussies will be among the 300 swimmers set to benefit from ISL owner Konstantin Grigorishin’s $30 million emergency fund aimed at keeping the world’s elite on track for next year’s Olympics.
Swimming
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Britain’s Olympic 100 metres breaststroke champion Adam Peaty has called the International Swimming League’s emergency fund of $30 million for swimmers in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic “huge for the sport”.
The ISL has introduced the ‘solidarity program’ to help swimmers continue to train for major events such as the Olympics which have been postponed to 2021.
The fund, which will run from September 2020 until July 2021, will be worth around $2500 a month to the more than 300 swimmers who are part of the ISL -- where they compete for franchised teams.
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Last year was the inaugural series.
Peaty, world record holder in both the 50 and 100m breaststroke, said the fund provided some assurance at an unpredictable time.
“It’s an uncertain time for us all at the moment so this much welcomed financial grant will assist swimmers as everyone prepares for 2021,” he said.
Konstantin Grigorishin, owner and financial backer of ISL, said he had stepped in when several swimmers were debating about whether to carry on after the Olympics were postponed.
“After the postponement of the Olympics some swimmers came to us and said they would now probably retire because they could not afford another year,” he said.
“So this is why we decided to take action.”
Grigroshin said the monthly amount paled into significance when compared to what other athletes earned in some sports.
“We aren’t talking about the wages of soccer or basketball players but for these swimmers we hope it will make a real difference and allow them to continue in the sport,” the 54-year-old Ukrainian billionare said.
This year’s series will now be in just one venue running from October 14 to November 17.
Grigorshin said that four countries were in the running to be hosts -- Australia, Japan, Hungary and the USA.
Meanwhile, the refusal of swimming’s global leader to shift the 2021 world championships to 2022 has triggered a wave of angry complaints from athletes and coaches demanding a rethink.
Currently scheduled to take place in Fukuoka, Japan in July 2021, the FINA world titles – which includes traditional swimming, open water swimming, water polo, diving and synchronised swimming – have to be moved to avoid clashing with the postponed Tokyo Olympics, which will take place from July 23-August 8, 2021.
Notorious for making critical decisions without consulting athletes, FINA’s executive director Cornel Marculescu and long serving President Julio Maglioni are insisting the world championships remain in 2021 but are facing increasing pressure to change.
The groundswell of opposition was summed up in a statement by the World Swimming Coaches Association (WSCA) which said: “Even the thought of having a World Championships, post-Olympics, is ludicrous.”
The Canadian and German swimming federations have publicly called for the championships to be moved to 2022, prompting the FINA Athletes’ Committee to conduct a global poll of competitors on the alternative time frames.
“Two options out of the four that were proposed emerged as the preferred ones,” Australian freestyler Cate Campbell told News Corp Australia.
“One of them was for the world championships to be held in 2022 and the second was a little bit later after the Olympics, in October and November.
“The other options were before the Olympics or immediately after the Olympics and pretty much athletes all said that wasn’t going to work.”
The decision comes at a critical time for FINA, whose strongman approach to running the sport is being increasingly challenged by exasperated athletes.
Tensions boiled over at last year’s world championships in South Korea when Australian anti-drugs crusader Mack Horton protested FINA’s decision to let China’s Sun Yang compete before his appeal against a second serious doping charge had been resolved.
Sun was later banned for eight years after the Court of Arbitration for Sport found him guilty of tampering though he has vowed to appeal the verdict to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.
It’s uncertain if he will after Sun missed the initial 30-day deadline to lodge his appeal.
He has been granted a 30-day extension because of the COVID-19 outbreak but his lawyers have not responded to questions from News Corp about whether he still intends to proceed.