Building off of SwimSwam’s prior reporting, British news outlet The Guardian has discovered 17 incorrect entry times on the start lists for the Rio Olympics.
The Guardian says that 9 entry times claim to come from the 2015 World Championships in Kazan, Russia, but don’t match the times the swimmer actually put up in Kazan. The Guardian also reports that 8 entry times come in events where the athlete didn’t compete in Kazan or was disqualified.
The 17 incorrect entry times reportedly come from 16 different countries and include 6 women and 11 men.
These sorts of entry discrepancies are becoming the norm in international swimming. The Guardian cites our reports from last summer in which we found errors in entry times submitted by the Mexican swimming federation. The Mexican federation eventually admitted to fabricating the entry times in order to help its own swimmers. The Mexican federation was never punished by FINA.
We also reported on the Rio entry lists originally containing two unqualified Croatian teams. Those teams were removed from the entry lists the day after our report.
The Guardian has also reported last week on a Kenyan swimmer, Issa Mohamed, who says he was not selected to swim in Rio even though he had more FINA points than the swimmer who was selected by Kenya for the Olympics. The Guardian says the selected Kenyan swimmer was among the 17 with incorrect entry times.
FINA blames the entry time errors on the Rio Organizing Committee (ROC), but the ROC says FINA’s technical committee signed off on all the times at a meeting prior to the Olympics.
I made the swimming entries for my country and we were never asked to present any entry times but only name and event of each entry. The entry times were added by the organizing committee.
What is the story on the Women’s 100 Free for FILS RABETSARA Estellah? is the time that is listed as 2:35.25 a misprint?
She swam a 1:01, so, probably.
I think all the dudes from heat 1 of the 100 free yesterday all dropped like, ten seconds each, too.
FINA is too busy counting the cash. Can’t bother with this silly time verification stuff
It’s freakin ridiculous that this actually happened.
Verifying the times should have been an easy job for them as they have the database. All they needed is assign somebody who actually understand the qualification rules to do the job. It doesn’t take that much time. It should’ve taken no more than a couple of days.