A joint bid between cross-border counterparts Windsor, Canada and Detroit, United States will be the hosts of the 2016 Short Course World Championships, FINA announced today.
FINA is hosting a major bureau meeting this week ahead of the Istanbul World Championships and this assignment was one of the major agenda items. The 2016 World Championships will be the post-Olympic equivalent of this year’s meet in Turkey.
“I warmly congratulate the city of Windsor, the Aquatic Federation of Canada and Swimming Canada! I am sure we will have a great FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in 2016”, declared FINA President Dr. Julio C. Maglione.
The meet will be hosted in Windsor at the WFCU Center, which seats 6,500 people in a hockey setup; that will be small compared to many World Championship host venues we’ve seen lately, though many times seats have gone unfilled at larger venues. This is the first time that a World Championship meet will be hosted in the Western Hemisphere in a decade (since 2006).
Interestingly, in their announcement FINA said they received interest from the UAE, Hong Kong, and Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan has never been announced by FINA as a bidder before, with Hong Kong and the UAE named as the other two finalists.
Next up will be the announcement of the 2018 meet. FINA had named the same finalists for that bid which would imply either the UAE or Hong Kong would be the hosts; however, Turkmenistan may be entering that competition as well.
Rumor is that the city of Detroit is going to declare bankruptcy…..
Yeah, exactly how Detroit fits into the equation is somewhat nebulous. If the events are being held in Windsor it would seem like people would stay in Windsor. I certainly wouldn’t want to cross the border twice daily to get to a swim meet.
That’s an interesting point Kirk. There must be a plan; the two cities once considered a joint Olympic bid, and host an annual international freedom festival between the two cities.
Perhaps they will plan some sort of “express” lane for those traveling for the meet, or load up on staff to speed up the process? I’ll reach out to organizers and see what I can drum up.
World meet in the middle of december in Canada… That should be fun!
This is great news for this part of the country! I am looking forward to going to some of these sessions and supporting our countries athletes 🙂
On another thought, what a huge headache it is going to be getting from Detroit into Windsor. Both the bridge and tunnel are notorious for traffic backups. I wonder how they are going to get around that side of this “joint” venture?
Maybe put the Boblo boat back in action for use as a water taxi, with temporary border control outposts on either side of the Detroit River?
And will USA ever host WORLDS? (that is, the real FINA World Aquatic Championships)
When FINA makes the cost to do so reasonable without the massive government subsidies that are currently typically required in order to meet their assorted requirements in and out of the competition pools. The losing Long Beach 2005 bid committee later said that they were eventually glad they didn’t get the meet because their projections showed that the meet committee would have massively ended up in the hole. When that meet ended up in Montreal instead there were financial difficulties with their committee that resulted in the suicide of the bid head.
And then there was the massive corruption surrounding Rome 2009, the UAE having to give back the 2013 meet, and if you add in a bunch of… Read more »
Maybe they should just be hosted by Australia every year.
I’ll admit to a certain fondness for Australian customs officials’ actions ahead of Perth 1998, so that might not be a bad idea, even though it’s tough travel for so many other countries.
This is awesome! I am very interested to see how they divide things up between Detroit and Windsor…I am in the D right now, it is an exciting time to be here!
Ok – Windsor has more doughnut stores and adult entertainment clubs per capita than anywhere in the World! Maybe best for athletes to finish their last event before going to those!
Given that FINA often selects venues based on creature comforts available for their home office staff, I do wonder if the Windsor Ballet gave the bid a boost and what that would say about FINA.
(I grew up in Michigan, and consequently think of the Ontario border cities in that very special safe but vice-filled way.)
“A joint bid between cross-border counterparts Windsor, Canada and Detroit, United States…” Is that code for: Canada is going to host the event and the US is going to pick up the tab?