After their Bureau meeting in Barcelona this week, FINA has announced a 7-meet series for the 2013 FINA World Cup Series.
August dates:
- Eindhoven, Netherlands August 7-8
- Berlin, Germany August 10-11
October/November meets (dates not set yet):
- Moscow, Russia
- Dubai, UAE
- Doha, Qatar
- Singapore
- Tokyo, Japan
- Beijing China
The hosts are effectively the same as they were in 2012, with the exception that the traditional Stockholm meet has been replaced with one in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. This will be the first time since the 1999-2000 season that the series will not make a stop in Sweden’s capital city
This new schedule will feature a series that begins in Europe, instead of having Europe in the middle of the schedule as they had in the past. It will also have two meets that will immediately follow the 2013 FINA World Championships that are being held in Barcelona. This should drastically reduce the costs of travel to these meets for many of the world’s top athletes, and also capitalize off of the momentum we saw, for example, at this year’s Short Course World Championships, where a number of swimmers went straight back into competition afterward.
It would also allow swimmers to carry their tapers over from the long course season into a short course season in a year where there is no 25-meter World Championship event.
There are also changes to the prize money awards and the scoring system, though details on those were not revealed in the FINA release.
The 2013 World Championships will run from July 19th-August 4th.
