Florian Wellbrock and Gregorio Paltrinieri, Olympic Champions and two of the most high-profile open water swimmers in the world, blasted World Aquatics after the most recent Open Water World Cup stop in Portugal.
See the photos of their stories below, courtesy of screenshots from X user @swimupdates:
Wellbrock: Hey World Aquatics, the water may have looked fine, but did you notice how many women got sick after racing? Maybe it’s time to reconsider the event locations and pay closer attention to water quality.
Paltrinieri: Water quality is an issue, water temperature is an issue, nothing ever really change. 10+ athletes sick, some at the hospital.
According to Italian publication Fanpage, Ginevra Taddeucci also criticized the global aquatic governing body after a bad experience in Setúbal.
“A whole night vomiting, lying on the ground” the 2024 Olympic bronze medalist in the women’s 10k remarked. “Dear World Aquatics, we have been facing problems of poor water quality in competitions for years. Where is the protection for the athletes?”
The final stop of the 2026 Open Water World Cup took place June 20-21 not far from Lisbon. Seatemperature.info lists the water’s temperature at 19 C (66.2 F) on Saturday and 19.6 C (67.3) on Sunday. SwimSwam was unable to find specific data on water quality for that day.
The timed results, particularly those on the women’s side, reflect the notion that conditions were suboptimal. Aussie superstar Moesha Johnson won the 10k race in a time of 2:08:12.10. For comparison, she won the same course last year in 1:53:39.60, and she has not been slower than 1:59 at any other event this year. In a post-race interview with World Aquatics, she confirmed that conditions were poor in her opinion.
At the most recent World Aquatics open water event prior to the World Cup, the 2025 World Championships, concerns also arose among athletes. After his fourth of four golds in open water events, Wellbrock was given medical attention due to high water temperatures. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, water quality in the Seine River was one of the biggest concern stories leading up to the games.
With respect to Wellbrock’s comment about wanting World Aquatics to reconsider event location, World Aquatics chose the exact same four courses in 2026 as they did for 2025: Ibiza (ES), Somabay (EG), Golfo Aranci (IT), and Setúbal (PT). The 2024 stop also had three of these four sites in its circuit, as did 2023. The 2027 Cup will bring at least one new course to the table. The Mexican government recently announced that coastal resort town Cancún will serve as the first stop.
These issues have been trending longer than college teams getting cut.
Time to initiate a FINA reboot
Crohn’s disease will be the new swimmer’s shoulder for OW swimmers
Soft
Glad to see those athletes calling out WA for not doing enough to protect their health. WA may not control what bacteria or pollutants go into the water, but they can control whether athletes are asked to compete in that water. This has happened too often over the last few years. Hope they will do better.
Also, SwimSwam, thank you for including that phenomenal photo of Paltrinieri as the header. That is an epic scowl he is giving. Quite appropriate!
The more that one is involved in high level competition, the more that one is exposed to the fact that this is just big business now, and whomever “donates” the biggest purse, receives the biggest events. Tourism and Government dollars are thrown to NGO’s and W.A to host this level of event, athletes and support crew are very much second (or lower) in the consideration stakes as to where these events are held and the athletes and support crews have had enough. Many higher profile swimmers are understanding they need to band together for meaningful change. With so many relatively stable and optimal racing environments around the globe why choose unstable and sub-optimal race venues?
🤑🤑🤑>🤮🤮🤮
World Aquatics is a shitshow that should be overthrown & sued out of existence !
It is certainly an interesting moment in time somehow nearly every institution everywhere seems to have abused and betrayed the social contract. It is radicalizing to the point it’s easy to forget it wasn’t always like this and we can have good leadership and good organizations that help and don’t hinder
USA swimmer Becca Mann is back to 85%. Last week was a bust. E-colli is for real.