After not mentioning Russia in their initial release that the 2025 World Aquatics Championships have been moved from Kazan, Russia to Singapore, Russian government officials say that the 2025 World Championships have been postponed to 2029, not canceled.
Vladimir Salnikov, the president of the All-Russia Swimming Federation, told state-run Russian media TASS that the two parties are discussing a rescheduling of the 2025 World Championships in Kazan to 2029.
“The issue of the tournament’s postponement has already been discussed,” he said. “Now, there is a proposal to move the Aquatics World Championships in Kazan to the year 2029.”
Vladimir Leonov, the Sports Minister of Tatarstan (where Kazan is the capital), spoke in more certain terms, saying that the meet has already been scheduled.
“We maintain a dialogue with the international federation,” Leonov said. “The World Aquatics Championships in Kazan has not been canceled, it was rescheduled to 2029.”
World Aquatics took the middle road, saying that “no decisions have been made about the host for the event in 2029.”
“Yesterday’s announcement is only about the World Aquatics Championships – Singapore 2025,” he continued.
World Aquatics (formerly FINA) has continued to walk a tightrope with one of its most prominent international sporting partners. The organization was one of the last to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from international sporting competitions in spring 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and one of the last to remove its global sporting events from Russia.
Eventually, World Aquatics did move against Russia, though the decision was softballed – Russian and Belarusian athletes were “not invited” to the summer’s World Aquatics Championships. No statement was ever released on the World Short Course Championships in December, but no Russian or Belarusian athletes participated.
World Aquatics’ latest statement has been that they have “no updates” on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in World Aquatics competition, but they so far have declined to elaborate on what, exactly, that means.
Kazan has become a regular host of major World Aquatics events since building the Palace of Water Sports for the 2013 World University Games. The city has since hosted the 2015 World Aquatics Championships, and several minor World Aquatics championships and World Series/World Cup events in the last decade.
They were scheduled to host both the 2022 World Junior Swimming Championships and World Short Course Swimming Championships before both events were removed from the country.
If Kazan’s World Championships are, in fact, postponed, and not canceled, that would be the third World Aquatics Championships (and fourth World Championship meet overall) postponed this decade amid global challenges like war and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Singapore is scheduled to be the last of three consecutive World Aquatics Championships to be hosted in Asia: 2023 in Fukuoka, 2024 in Doha, and 2025 in Singapore.
We will see Russian athletes competing in any case. They certainly don’t need the revenue from hosting, if that amounts to much. The IMF said Russia’s economy will grow this year and next year despite mostly inconsequential sanctions. This is because they are supported by BRICS+ trading partners.
Russia’s government is a terrorist organization running a gas station. It has no business among the civilized nations of the world as long as Putin is in charge. I hope I live long enough to see him on trial in The Hague.
World aquatics constantly telling ‘half truths’. It will never sever its filthy ties with Russia. After all World Aquaticsis being lead by Captain Corruption
I almost can’t believe this. I get that WA is trying to be as neutral as possible. But they were deliberately vague in their press release to let the world believe it had been cancelled and now they’re basically confirming Russia’s claim that it probably hasn’t?
Dodgy dodgy dodgy.
This is the way Russia operates. I guarantee gallant World Aquatics appeased them with promise of 2029 and subsequent. Time allows you to get distracted from just how evil we are, enabling distraction and the ever-popular deflective comparisons. We’ll attack Ukraine days after Beijing to allow maximum forget before Paris.
It’s scary to think what Russia could be like in 6 years.
In six years there could be no of such empire at all. There are serious views circulating in European media at list that it would be either way not good if Russia wins or lose in this war. That it will result in different political structures on this huge territory that will abandon imperial aggressive ambitions and will find another way to live with other nations. And Tatarstan with its capital in Kazan will be among those who leads such movement to progress.
No matter how bad Russia gets, World Aquatics will still always be syphoning dirty cash under the table
Absolutely filthy sporting body
Scary to think what World Aquatics might be like in 6 years. Hopefully disbanded
So they do care. Hosting the sport events isn’t that much about earning money but more about the prestige that they are loosing. And that is one of the main component of keeping the current Russian government in power. Why do you think that many major events in sport like Olympic Games and Soccer World Cup and countless word championships in different sports were hosted by Putin’s government in recent years no matter how much it costed to the country? Because it was the shortest way to the hearts of people in Russia to gain the popularity and stay in power. It is a fairy tale for children that sport and politics are not related.
It’s a Special Swimming Operation