Mexican Swimmers Claim Universiade Entry Error Led to Falsified Times

As a follow-up to our report last night about some irregularities in the times submitted by the Mexican Swimming Federation, early on Thursday morning, FINA has acknowledged our question, but has still not provided any comment.

Christer Magnusson, a member of the FINA Swimming Technical Committee and the organizer of the website scmsom.se, the only place we could find many of these entry times recorded (as updated, undated National Records) did respond early Thursday. Magnusson explained that when he updated the Mexican Records on his site, he used the start lists from Kazan as a source, presuming they were correct. Magnusson says that he cannot speak on behalf of FINA, but that he saw the times on the start lists like the rest of the world, and uses those lists as one of many sources to maintain massive amounts of data on his site.

Since last night, we have received some requests to lay out the entry times as compared to the relevant standards. You can read an explanation of what the standards mean (in some cases the listed standard below is an “A” standard, and in some cases it is a “B” standard) on our original report.

While this rubric does not, and should not be read to, imply that every entry time was made up, we were only able to verify a small handful of the entry times, and have asked FINA and the Mexican Swimming Federation to do so. Mexican swimmers proceeded with their races in prelims on Thursday morning in Kazan.

The one entry time that we were able to verify was the 1:10.72 from Daniela Carrillo in the 100 breaststroke at the 2015 Mexican Nationals. We were unable to verify her entry in the 200 breast (she was 2:33.97 at Nationals in that race), but she did go well under the FINA “B” standard in that race on Thursday morning with a 2:30.

Monstserrat Ortuna also did swim an 8:44.05 at Mexican Nationals in the women’s 800 free and a 16:44.88 in the 1500 free, so those times are also verified.

Lorenzo Loria did, in fact, swim a 23.65 in the 50 free at Mexican Nationals (though not the 23.63 as entered), but still should not have been allowed to enter at Worlds by qualifying standards – that time did not meet the “B” standard.

More information has also been revealed after speaking with several members of Mexico’s Pan American Games team as to why the swimmers who are at the World Championships are entered. They have informed SwimSwam that these swimmers were meant to be swum at the World University Games in Gwangju earlier in the summer, but an error in Mexico’s entries kept them from swimming there. Instead, these swimmers were sent to the World Championships, which have much higher qualifying barriers than does the Universiade.

Given that most of the swimmers entered at the World Championships were in 3rd, 4th, and 5th place positions at Mexico’s National Championship meet earlier this year, it makes sense that it would be a team typically sent to a second-tier meet, though we were unable to find any publication of Mexico’s intended roster for the Universiade.

All of this is supported by the fact that Mexico entered many sports at the Universiade, but not swimming.

We have also examined past entries to the World Championships for Mexico, and those entries all seem to be in line with FINA qualifying standards. Entries for the Pan American Games earlier this year, where most of the country’s top swimmers competed, also appeared correct, with those entries being handled by USA Swimming.

The president of the Mexican Swimming Federation Kiril Todorov is the vice-chairman of the FINA Technical Swimming Committee

Note: we were able to verify that Lorenzo Loria swam a 23.65 at Mexican Nationals, very close to the 23.63 that he is entered with. However, because Mexico has another swimmer entered with an “A” standard, and Loria’s time didn’t even meet the “B” standard, that entry should not have been allowed anyway.