Forum - THEMA: Confusing An "Echo Chamber" with growth

The Swimming World Cup, a concept that predates its launch in Tokyo in 1979, is over for another year.

The year after the LA2028 Olympics marks the Cup's 50th birthday. I say 'marks' not 'celebrates', because the series has been treading water, not rising on a tide of possibilities, for far too long.

I say that despite the tweaks to formats, such as the chasing of triple crowns, the crown-busting bonus and the money-for-performance link of Cup to World short-course titles on the horizon.

I say it, too, despite all the thrills brought to us by Cam McEvoy, Marrit Steenbergen, Pieter Coetze, Yu Yiting and the good race preparation it provides, whether we're looking at Belgian teammates Lucas Henveaux and Ross Vanotterdijk breaking national records - both fine examples of the international nature of coaching in swimming - or others, like Irish teammates Mona McSharry and Ellen Walshe, like so many others on tour shy of their best ever but honing the skills and art of racing that has and will serve them well come much bigger moments.

Of course, for many years now, you haven't had to dip your toe into the water very far before you reach the 800-point performance threshold. Many finals this year included efforts in the 700-800-points range. That means times that many of those gunning for World s/c titles, podiums and finals in December, and the same at World long-course Championships next summer in Budapest, and then, in Los Angeles at the 2028 Olympics repeat, broken swims or not, in training on a regular basis.

Swimming training, for all the joy we may take in that world, is not a spectator sport. So, the thrill of a World Cup is in the telling of the stories of the athletes. We've mentioned storytelling, lore, on many occasions down the years, nay decades, here and in other places held dear in the State of Swimming's archive.

It was May this year when I last wrote about it in our "FORUM - Thema: Selling Swimming Beyond The Swim", with a nod to Buck Dawson's assertion 40 years ago that "People are not interested in swimming ... they're interested in swimmers":

FORUM - Has Swimming Lost Its Lore & Love of Storytelling?

"People are not interested in swimming ... they're interested in swimmers". So said Buck Dawson 40 years ago. In 2026, swimming is still treading water in its niche pool between Olympic Heights, with no pro-sports economy to speak of. What's gone wrong & how can swimming spread its song of swimmers?

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

The World Cup is not the best of vehicles, certainly not in current guise and not at a time when venues where the racing unfolds can only look back in envy at the likes of national championships of the 1960s when the house was packed, there was standing room only, and the front row of seating was occupied by media that including several TV crews alongside reporters from many national newspapers.

No amount of direct digital reach to fans makes up for the loss of the reach lost in the past 20 years, which, of course included the careers of some of the greats of the sport, not least of all that of the GOAT, Michael Phelps.

He, like so many others, didn't do Cup tours nor any Cup racing in peak form. It was never a priority, not even close.

At which point, I am happy to note that there are positive aspects to a Cup series for the relatively limited numbers who attended, However, as you know, my role is not PR - and the downside is where debate is needed if things are going to get better.

We'll get back to the actual swimming and the cup event soon enough, but let's start with something that would have stood out to wider sports and general audiences had they tuned in: politics.

The 2026 series went ahead without a single athlete from the Ukraine.

The Cup was the first event at which World Aquatics placed the country code and recognition back in play despite the fact that country continues to wage war, murder and maim Ukrainians and lay the invaded nation asunder, and despite the fact that no substantive conditions of any kind that existed when that aggressor nation was banned from sport as a result of Putin's breaking of the Olympic Truce in 2022 (aka, the moment he ordered his troops to attack a neighbouring, sovereign nation, in a clear and undeniable act of war) have changed.

Let's be clear about the politics that the World Aquatics decision poured like poison into the pools of Aquatics sports. Their move could be said to be in tune with an International Olympic Committee tilt at making sure Putin and all his cronies can claim rehabilitation and return of their nation into the Olympic "Family".

Governors point to the Olympic Charter and a 'no politics in sport' pledge. Understandable: there's a great deal of merit in keeping politics out of sport.

I just can't see how World Aquatics has achieved that by scrapping the very vehicle that allowed Ukrainians and Russians to race alongside each other: neutrality.

Once that's removed, why would athletes from the nation under attack feel comfortable (to say the least) with competing against athletes representing the aggressor nation killing thousands of their fellow civilians every season, among them scores of athletes and those working in sport alongside them, in a war that has also had a devastating impact on the world economy and much related to it.

How many European brands would give a second thought to being a major multi-million-euro sponsor of international swimming right now? Your guess is as good as mine, but bank on a very low number indeed, if there's a number at all. Here's part of the reason, alongside 'not money for that':

In the period covering the three rounds of the cup and a couple of weeks either side, estimates suggest that more than 17,000 Russian military personnel have had their lives wiped out by the futile war Putin and his regime started but can never win.

In that same period, Russians have also killed more than 500 Ukrainian civilians (with more than 2,200 others wounded) to take the total of innocent Ukrainian lives lost to more than 17,000 in military action Putin believed would be over in weeks but is now in its fifth year, and Donald Trump said (on 53 occasions according to reliable outlets keeping score) before winning the 2024 election for the U.S. presidency that he would end the war "within 24 hours.

So, 17k Russian military lives among the sons and fathers and brothers of Putin's country vs 17k Ukrainian civilians.

And then a World Cup where Ukrainians feel they cannot possibly enter, let alone attend, the first event at which they would no longer face athletes carrying neutral status in a system backed by checks on the veracity of such a claim, but instead face athletes from the country tearing their own nation to shreds on a daily basis, with no sign of that changing as a fifth consecutive winter approaches.

Hand on heart, all you blazers who took that decision: do you see the problem, do you feel the pain and do you understand how a great many people in the world will not only perceive your decision as having taken a side because that fits the current political mood in Olympic sport, but will hold you to account in a way that may damage aquatics sports in the months and years and decades ahead.

If FIFA and football are entities in a very different financial league and power play that might be able to afford the odd scandal of a president playing politics where and when he ought never to have done so, swimming, I would wager, cannot afford anything of the kind among its decision-makers.

Trust declines with each passing 'wrong direction' taken by an international federation, and if anyone thinks that a swimming history that includes the politics of handing swimming's highest honours to some of the architects and organisers of the GDR Doping era, to Putin and various other political figures who made its hall of fame, think again. Out there in a world that may ask 'Swimming? Is it for us?', the weight of a hall of shame counts all the more the smaller a sport is.

Beyond The Politics

Parking the politics, there's a constitutional obligation to growth that World Aquatics (and those who abide by its constitution and rules) has to take into account when weighing up the worth of its World Cup in current guise:

To "grow" Aquatics sport or not to grow Aquatics sport - that is the question. Some answers and arguments follow as we ask whether World Aquatics and affiliates are confusing an "echo chamber" with growth.