Greensboro Withdraws Bid to Host 2025 and 2027 World Championships

Braden Keith
by Braden Keith 45

April 25th, 2019 News

The organizing committee that was behind the bid by Greensboro, North Carolina to host either the 2025 or 2027 FINA World Championships & FINA World Masters Championships has withdrawn its bid. The decision came after the organization attended the FINA Bid Information Meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland in January of this year.

This leaves 5 cities currently in the bidding for the event:

  • Belgrade, Serbia
  • Budapest, Hungary
  • Kazan, Russia
  • Kiev, Ukraine
  • China

The group said in a statement that they were encouraged by USA Swimming to start by hosting a smaller meet rather than jumping right in to the World Championships.

“Encouraged by USA Swimming, our largest aquatics sport governing body in the U.S., we are going to take a walk-before-you-run approach to international aquatics championships,” said Hill Carrow, Chairman of the Greensboro USA Bid Committee. “Instead of jumping into competitive international aquatics events head-first with the largest aquatics competition on the planet, we intend instead to start out with more modest-sized international events and work our way up. Some of the events we are now considering include FINA World Cup, FINA World Junior Championships, FINA Champions Swim Series, and UANA (Pan American) Masters Swimming Championships, among others.”

The Greensboro Coliseum likely would have been the target to convert into a temporary pool to host the event, as the Greensboro Aquatic Center itself is much smaller than the venues typically used to host the swimming portion of the championships. The GAC, however, could have been used to host training and other portions of the event.

“It is certainly disappointing,” said bid chairman Hill Carrow, “as a significant amount of time and effort has gone into the United States bid. The fact that the event has never been held in our country presented a unique opportunity, and if ever the time was right to bring this event to the U.S. it would be during the run-up to the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028. The Worlds are not an inexpensive event, but during the next nine years there is going to be more money flowing into Olympic Sports in our country than any time in history – as evidenced by Nike’s reported commitment of an estimated $200 million to become the first domestic sponsor of the LA Games!”

Even in withdrawal, the bid touted the Greensboro Coliseum Complex for its ability to host every part of the event, aside from open water, including the athlete village and headquarters hotel, in the same complex. The complex also lauded its new relationships with FINA staff built through the process. They credit those relationships with allowing Greensboro to host the FINA Artistic Swimming (Synchronized Swimming) World Series next month from May 24th-26th.

The USA, which has won more World Championship medals across all disciplines than any other country by almost double, has still never hosted the event. They did host the World Short Course Swimming Championships, a much smaller event by scale, in Indianapolis in 2004. Based on the 5 remaining hosts, 2025 and 2027 will make for 7 consecutive championships hosted in either Eastern Europe or Asia.

Recent and upcoming hosts:

  • 2015 – Kazan, Russia
  • 2017 – Budapest, Hungary
  • 2019 – Gwangju, South Korea
  • 2021 – Fukuoka, Japan
  • 2023 – Doha, Qatar
  • 2025 – TBD
  • 2027 – TBD

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Eddie Rowe
5 years ago

The problem with GAC is tiny locker rooms. There’s barely room for 10 people to change, and they host meets with 1000+ swimmers – it’s a nightmare for athletes.

Fat Swammer
5 years ago

The (sad?) truth is that no US city will gamble on being the best aquatic city on earth. 30 years ago “If you build it, they will come…” might have worked. No more. Lots of reasons for that; most have nothing to do with sport.

Other countries are willing to gamble more— and whether that’s good or bad is debatable. I tend to think that if we were honest about true demand for world class facilities world wide, we’d figure it out— there are plenty plus some.

2 Cents
5 years ago

Hold up…. Qatar is hosting in 2023?? Do they have an indoor open water facility??? Certainly any creek or pond in Gboro is better than the 100+ degree water they will be swimming in in Qatar!!! Have we not learned our lesson from swimming in over heated open water yet?????

BGNole97
5 years ago

How about Boston? Indoor 50m facilities at Harvard and MIT. Temporary pool in TD Arena, and open water right in the Charles River or the harbor.

2 Cents
Reply to  BGNole97
5 years ago

That’s gotta be too cold… even in the summer I would think. I know the Atlantic Ocean is still too cold that time of year right off the Cape, so I would imagine the Charles River would be too….I’m assuming.

BGNole97
5 years ago

How about Chicago? Indoor 50m facilities at UChicago and Northwestern. Notre Dame’s 50m facility not far for another practice venue. Could use the basketball arena or Soldier field for a temporary pool. Open water stuff in Lake Michigan.

Walter
Reply to  Braden Keith
5 years ago

108+ miles, LOL. There also is a reason why Illinois Swimming has many of its big age group meets in Wisconsin.

BGNole97
5 years ago

How about Atlanta? You have the facility from the 1996 games at GTech, plus you have both indoor and outdoor 50m pools at Emory nearby, open water events at Lake Lanier. Easy transportation and plenty of hotels.

2 Cents
Reply to  BGNole97
5 years ago

GT refuses to even host ACCs anymore…. no way they would agree to Worlds.

Donut
Reply to  BGNole97
5 years ago

Atlanta needs to stop hosting major sporting events until they can figure out more effective public transit. Getting around in the city is already horrible enough even without the addition of thousands of athletes and spectators.

Spectatorn
Reply to  BGNole97
5 years ago

That was 1996. By 2025 or 2027 the facility will be about 30 years old. The expectation of a great pool have changed a lot.

Ken
5 years ago

Perhaps host USMS Nationals in 2021.

Torchbearer
5 years ago

The US not able to host the World Championships- it is like the mystery of the Sphinx.
I live in Oz, and we could host in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth with a year’s notice if needed…all with existing world standard Aquatic Centres.

Troy
Reply to  Torchbearer
5 years ago

They don’t even need an aquatic centre with enough seating because any indoor stadium large enough for an temporary indoor pool will do. The Melbourne WCs were hosted in Rod Laver Arena (tennis stadium)!

torchbearer
Reply to  Troy
5 years ago

But you need facilities for diving, water polo and synchronised swimming- so a major aquatic centre is needed as well.

bobo gigi
Reply to  Torchbearer
5 years ago

Looks like you discover only in 2019 that USA is in many ways a third world country (infrastructure, healthcare, poverty or clean water).

2 Cents
Reply to  bobo gigi
5 years ago

Such a troll…. because you need a host that has universal healthcare since the athletes at the meet are all citizens and need healthcare and its not like Russia or even France has a large homeless population….oh wait…. never mind.

And the clean water thing?? Seriously?!?? should we get into the Brazil again and their water??

Ragnar
Reply to  bobo gigi
5 years ago

Is that you John Wayne? Is this me?

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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