Swimming news 2022: Turmoil and unrest lie beneath the surface of Australia’s favourite Olympic sport
A $10 million lawsuit, government bailouts, and possible conflicts of interest. In the pool our swimming champions are firing, but behind the scenes our favourite Olympic sport is in turmoil.
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The beaming smiles of Australia’s finest swimmers at the world shortcourse championships in Melbourne are disguising the behind-the-scene turmoil of this country’s favourite Olympic sport.
As free-to-air television shows super-fit athletes winning races and breaking records, the water has never been murkier. Issues include:
* A pending $10 million lawsuit that could bankrupt the sport.
* A $9 million Victorian Government handout to host the world titles.
* Questions over potential conflicts of interest and transparency.
Serious questions are now being asked about not just how Australia came to host these world championships, but also why the sport is achieving peak with performances in the pool yet continues to turn million-dollar deficits in the way the sport is being managed.
FINANCIAL STRIFE
Beaming smiles and crowd close ups on free to air television make it appear all is well in Australian swimming.
But the unseen rows of empty seats at the Melbourne Sports Centre are the first clue something is up with Australia’s premier Olympic sport.
Scratch the surface and you’ll discover problems run deep.
Swimming Australia has already agreed to an independent review into the way it runs the sport after receiving formal complaints from member organisations, including elite swimmers, coaches and state bodies.
Although there is no mention of any pending legal threats in its latest financial report, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal Swimming Australia faces the prospect of a lawsuit that could bankrupt the sport if they lose the case.
It can also be disclosed hosting these world championship won’t save Swimming Australia’s current financial problems — having recorded a $2.2 million loss in the last financial year — because this event is not expected to make any money.
On the contrary, Victorian taxpayers are being left to pick up the bill after the government tipped in more than $9 million during the recent state election campaign.
The secret deals that led to the championships ending up in Australia remain shrouded in mystery.
The event was originally scheduled to take place in Russia in July but was transferred to Australia after Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine.
Heralded as a win for good over evil, the announcement caught the sport’s insiders by surprise as the world governing body FINA did not conduct an open tender process.
Swimming Australia board members had no idea Melbourne was even considering making a pitch for the event until they told it was already signed and sealed.
Highly placed sources said board members still haven’t been given the financial details they have requested to see and they were also kept in the dark about the makeup of the organising committee running the event.
The senior management team for the event includes Swimming Australia’s chief executive Eugenie Buckley and two colleagues from a private sports consulting company Buckley is involved with.
Government sources said Visit Victoria specifically asked Swimming Australia whether this presented any possible conflicts of interests, but was told there was no problem because the consulting firm, Suiko, was not involved in any part of the event.
Even so, key stakeholders, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Sunday Telegraph there needs to be more clarity around the working of Australia’s favourite Olympic sport because it’s so reliant on taxpayer funding.
While Australia’s incredible swimmers are flourishing on the world stage, there’s turmoil outside the pool, with no major sponsor and states in uproar after being told the funding levels to their development programs are being slashed.
The silence from Swimming Australia on so many important matters has also added to the concerns being raised.
LEGAL ACTION
Swimming Australia has confirmed to The Sunday Telegraph it is involved in an ongoing legal stoush with the Australian Swimming League (ASL), a proposed professional competition set up in 2020.
The idea, partly conceived by then-Swimming Australia president John Bertrand and former head coach Jacco Verhaeren and his successor Rohan Taylor was to create a made-for-TV national competition to promote the sport and bring much-needed money into competitors’ pockets.
In July 2021, Swimming Australia announced it had signed an agreement for the new competition to begin, but three months later Buckley — who had just taken over as interim CEO — emailed ASL to say the deal was off.
ASL has since lodged a statement of intent with the Victorian Supreme Court and it’s understood litigation could begin early in 2023. If successful, legal experts say ASL’s damages claim could be as high as $10 million.
Swimming Australia president Michelle Gallen told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s before the court so I’m not willing to talk about it. We do not expect any impact in the next financial year.”
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS DEAL
Gallen said she did not know the full details about how the world championships ended up in Melbourne because the deal was cut before she took over as president last month.
But Gallen did say the three-way agreement with Swimming Australia, FINA and Visit Victoria would never have got off the ground without the government’s financial backing.
“Who we got the deal of the century from was Visit Victoria,” she said. “There was no ink dry until we had the local partner here willing to come in and help us out.
“Visit Victoria, essentially they are sponsoring the event so they don’t stand to gain anything from its success, except obviously visitor nights and bed nights and the showcasing of Melbourne.
“It’s not going to be a saviour for us, but it’s not going to be a bank breaker for us, either.
“It was never really with a view to making a whole ton of money, it was again more with that view of the opportunity for our athletes to compete on home soil and our crowds to see their athletes locally again.”
In the past, FINA has usually only awarded world championships to host countries after a rigorous bidding process voted on by members. But its chief executive Brent Nowicki said the rules were changed this time because FINA needed to find a new host at short notice after Russia was ditched and Australia was regarded as a reliable, proven partner.
“We did it because it was a decision based on what we deemed to be the right thing to do at the time,” he said.
GOVERNMENT BAILOUT
For commercial and confidentiality reasons, Visit Victoria does not reveal any of the details around the payments it makes to secure sporting events, but a leaked draft of the funding agreement, sighted by The Sunday Telegraph, shows the Victorian Government agreed to give Swimming Australia $9.1 million to stage the event.
The payments included $2.5 million for executing the deal and making a media announcement in Melbourne involving Premier Dan Andrews.
Further payments included $2 million for establishing the steering committee, $2 million for finalising the ticketing and marketing plans and $1.75 million for the final plan, including content for digital, broadcast and in-stadia purposes.
NOTHING TO SEE
The Visit Victoria funding agreement included a requirement to disclose any potential conflicts of interest.
It’s understood inquiries were made about why three of the six senior managers — Buckley, Brenton Rickard and Anita Palm — are all involved with Sukio, a consulting firm its website says was “established in 2010 to enable sports and events to have access to cost-effective expertise from consultants with direct experience in leading and managing sports and major events”.
Sukio lists Swimming Australia among its clients but when asked by The Sunday Telegraph whether this needed to be disclosed before the organising committee was announced, Gallen said Suiko had no involvement in running the world championships so there was no conflict of interest.
“The people on the organising committee are here because of their skillset as individuals,” she said. “It was a pretty tight time frame so there wasn’t the luxury of doing a worldwide search for a CEO of an organising committee or anything like that.
“We didn’t have the luxury of doing that sort of search.
“So it was by necessity, it involved people we knew had delivered this sort of event before. “People who’ve got runs on the ground and a lot of our own staff, because that’s what we’ve got. That’s the resources that we’ve got to tap into.”
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