13/11/2018
Duncan Scott, Olympic and World Championships medallist for Britain and Commonwealth 100m freestyle champion for Scotland, has joined the growing wave of big names who have signed to race at the International Swimming League's test event in Turin next month in the face of threats from FINA that it will not recognise the results and may impose suspensions on swimmers and the Italian federation if the event goes ahead.
The ISL has spent the past year attempting to negotiate with FINA but the international federation is holding firm to rules that do not allow swimmers and others to engage with organisations outside FINA's control and association. Those rules, however, are in conflict with European anti-trust law after a n EU competition authority ruling last year that instructed the International Skating Federation to alter anti-competitive rules that represented a monopoly and removed the right of athletes and others to choose where they competed and how they earned their living.
The League is a direct threat to the crisis-torn FINA World Cup, an event that offers the biggest prize money granted to swimmers by FINA (upped to a total pot of just over $2m this year, but fails top attract the vast bulk of the best swimmers in the world because the format and timing and geography of events is incompatible to the real lives of many competitors, their plans, programs and goals.
Scott joins a long list of big names heading for Turin, including current and not-currently reigning Olympic and World champions Adam Peaty (GBR), Ryan Murphy (USA), Sarah Sjostrom (SWE), Chad Le Clos (RSA), Chase Kalisz (USA), Federica Pellegrini (ITA), Katinka Hosszu (HUN), Ranomi Kromowidjojo (NED), Emily Seebohm (AUS) and Laszlo Cseh (HUN).
Swimmers from at least 14 leading swim nations have now signed up to race. They hail from nations that FINA would suspend at great risk: effectively there would be no World Championships without these nations next year.
