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The Future Of FINA: Introduction
May 24, 2011 - Craig Lord
In a series of articles in June, SwimNews will consider the future of the international swimming federation as delegates prepare for an Extraordinary Congress aimed at constitutional change 103 years after the organisation was founded
The Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) Amateur was founded on July 19, 1908 at the Manchester Hotel in London as the world gathered for the first Olympic Games to be held in the British capital. The founding father for FINA, George Hearn, of Britain, as joined by delegates from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, and Sweden. Their mission: to codifying and standardising swimming, diving and water polo.
Almost 103 years later to the day, this July in Shanghai, FINA delegates meet once more in an extraordinary congress that will consider changes to the FINA Constitution. In June, SwimNews will consider some of the most pertinent issues involved and ask how FINA needs to change if it is to be fighting fit for the next 100 years of governance.
While constitutions as a whole ought not to be used as a barrier to progress, changing them requires caution, care and a recognition of the original intention meant when men (no women way back then, and still very few at the very top of the sport today) laid down the foundations for more than 100 years of aquatics sports history.
Bertil Sallfors (SWE), FINA Honorary Secretary, summed up more than half a century of development in aquatic sports back at the 1960 Congress in Rome when he said: “The international importance of FINA has been built up by loyalty to the Rules and Regulations of the Organisation … FINA is and always has been devoid of political opinions and exists only to strengthen the world’s interest in swimming".
Go back to 1908 and Hearn, as President of the Amateur Swimming Association and the man about to press the button for FINA's future, said this: “… I thought that since the representatives of all Nations were in London for the Olympic Games of 1908, it would be a good opportunity to talk over the vexing question of amateurism and at the same time to compile a list of world records made under similar conditions and under proper supervision.”
The relevance of those words to those gathering in Shanghai this July to vote on constitutional matters ought to be lost on no-one in the sport. They are a symbol of just how much times have changed.
Recent history reminds us that it was the poor or erroneous interpretation of rules that allowed world records to be set when there was a distinct difference in prevailing competitive conditions. It took a vote of Congress in July 2009, to set FINA back on track.
As for the term amateur, it is now all but irrelevant to FINA. FINA is a business (for that very reason, in part, the oft-used terms 'brand' and 'family' are open to interpretation and question). Many top swimmers earn a decent (in a few cases exceptional) living from their sport), while coaching is an established profession that is yet to gain the recognition from FINA and those who govern the sport that many feel is deserved by those who spend their lives serving as guardians of athletes and athletic excellence.
In the water, amateurs exist only through financial circumstance not obligation, while at Bureau level and beyond the financial and in-kind support granted to many who play a role in running and guiding aquatic sports is generous, even to the extent of allowing some to enjoy aquatic governance as a fully funded lifestyle. In short, a career, no matter how often some still talk of "volunteers".
Genuine amateurs and volunteers can, however, still be found aplenty in aquatic sports: for a portion of deck-side officials, time-keepers, lane judges, parents, teachers and coaches - and the central protagonists of the show; the swimmers - at the foot of the pyramid of worldwide swimming organisations, "the love of it" remains a driving force, cost more pertinent than reward when it comes to their financial situation. There is a wide gulf in experience on the spectrum of aquatic sporting excellence.
Some background. Back in 1908, Hearn took the minutes of the meeting he chaired in London and topped his words with the title “Report of The International Swimming Conference”. The founding nations, Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Hungary, France and Denmark registered their new body as the “International Swimming Federation”, and it was not until a year later in Paris that the name “Federation Internationale [sic] De Natation Amateur” was born.
The purpose of creating FINA was straightforward: to bring order and structure to sport that lacked common direction, as Hearn put it. The cornerstones of a new FINA rule book laid down the law and imposed the new organisation's control from the outset in pursuit of cohesive and common standards: “ ... no nation shall institute, or allow to be instituted, within their jurisdiction, any Race or Competition, which shall have the title of a World’s Championship”. It would be 1973 before such a competition would be held officially.
The first FINA rules, drawn up in Paris in 1909, provided the very foundation on which the house of FINA was built. The most relevant and lasting of those was the standardisation of competitive conditions. In other words: fairness. On suits, the bottom line was this: “… no claim for Record can be considered unless all swimmers wear recognised costume with drawers under the costume”.
In London 1908, it had been agreed that world records could only be set in “absolutely still water (i.e. without current or tide)” and would be recognised from a list of events that reflected the disparity of standards across a world divided by imperial and metric measures. While records in all distances from 100 yards to 500 metres could be established in “a bath not less than 25 yards long”, anything from 880 yards upwards required the pool to be at least 100 metres in length.
Other conditions to be met by record-breakers included the need to have started from a dive, except in the case of backstroke, a minimum of two timekeepers to clock the performance. In a quirk of its time, where three timekeepers could not agree, the average of all three times was registered as the record. A surveyor was needed to measure the pool, and records had to be applied for within 14 days of a time being recorded.
Nations understood, as they do today, the need for standardisation of the competitive environment. They understood that that did not include issues such as the natural skills and strengths of individuals, such as length of limb, morphology and lung capacity, nor did it involve any control of the financial, dietary and other advantages that some populations have over others. Such things stood for reason for 100 years until they were raised by some who supported shiny suits in 2008 and 2009 alongside suggestions that no competition was fair because people were not created alike. Congress in 2009 begged to differ and sense and balance were restored, the sport of swimming returned to a place where FINA controlled what it could control: the environment in which competition takes place.
That position has been widely supported throughout FINA's history. By Paris in 1909, 20 nations registered as being eligible for affiliation of FINA, including “Bohemia”, Greece, Norway, Russia and Switzerland. By 1910, FINA listed as members Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, South Africa, Sweden and the United States of America.
We end this introductory article to the series that starts next month with a short consideration of FINA's raison d'être, those items recorded as objectives, then and now:1908:
2008:
