Our voters have spoken, and majority feel that FINA has made the right decision for the open water swimming event at this summer’s World Championships. The highest vote-getter was for FINA to keep the meet in Shanghai during the regular World Championship session, and simply be flexible in deciding which is the ideal day for them to hold the event. Roughly 30% of our voters chose this option.
This is exactly what FINA has decided to do, announced a few weeks ago, and they have already moved the races to early in the day in search of cooler temperatures. As former open water star Chloe Sutton pointed out in a recent piece for Universal Sports, so long as there is a focus on keeping as many eyes on the swimmers as possible, the water temperatures (which will be on the upper-limit of the FINA allowed range) is part of the attraction of the sport.
Should FINA Cancel Open Water Swimming in Shanghai?
- Choose ideal days within 2-week schedule (30%, 24 Votes)
- Change the date/venue of the event (24%, 19 Votes)
- Cancel the races altogether (22%, 17 Votes)
- Swim the meet as planned (16%, 13 Votes)
- Undecided (8%, 6 Votes)
Despite being the top vote-getter, this was by no means a unanimous decision. If you split the decided voters into two group, those for having the meet in Shanghai and those against it, the split is almost identical. A total of 46% of the voters were in favor of continuing the World Championship races either as planned, or flexibly within the two weeks, and 46% thought that the races should be either moved elsewhere or canceled altogether. In fact, the two groupings were separated by only a single vote, showing that there is still a lot of disagreement in the swimming world over whether or not FINA can be trusted to run a safe event.
