Times From Uzbekistan Open Don’t Appear In FINA World Ranks Database

Times from the Uzbekistan Open, where swimmers have accused meet organizers of manipulating times, do not appear in FINA’s official world rankings database.

The Uzbekistan Open took place in April. The meet was among the official Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualifying events listed by FINA on its website. But athletes, both privately and publicly, alleged that times from the meet were manipulated to allow for more Olympic qualifiers.

Indian swimmer Likith Selvaraj Prema competed at the meet and publicly protested the alleged timing manipulations during his 200 breaststroke final. Prema published a YouTube video detailing what he saw at the meet, including race videos that don’t appear to line up with the official results posted by meet organizers. The Uzbekistan swimming federation has called those allegations “unfounded and unsubstantiated,” arguing that the videos Prema posted “are not the swims in question in the indictment by the Indian athlete.” But a second set of race videos obtained by SwimSwam match up with Prema’s videos, and again contradict the official results.

FINA’s current world rankings do not include times from that Uzbekistan Open meet. We’ve reached out to FINA to clarify whether their absence is related to the allegations of timing manipulation at that meet, but we have not yet received a response. FINA’s website still does list the Uzbekistan Open among its official Olympic qualifying competitions. We’ve also reached out to the Uzbekistan swimming federation for comment, but they have not yet responded.

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Comet
3 years ago

Dominion timing systems

Reid
3 years ago

Looks like they’re also missing the times from the earlier November Uzbekistan Open, specifically Vladislav Mustafin’s and Denis Petrashov’s 100 breaststrokes and Khurshidjon Tursunov’s 100 free: https://cdn.swimswam.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/UzbSWCup2020SR.pdf
Notable partly because Petrashov is from Kyrgyzstan, not Uzbekistan, and also because the breaststroke times were actually plausible. Maybe all times swum in Uzbekistan are being disregarded, or maybe just an administrative error.

Uzbswimmer
Reply to  Reid
3 years ago

The results from a meet in November were also manipulated and reported to FINA.

swimmer
3 years ago

Really hope it will not stop there, those people responsible for manipulations should be banned from sport

papa johns
3 years ago

the times were too darn fast i guess – they go crazy in uzi 😈

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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