THEMA - THE NATURE OF CONTRACTS

If you had to list a high-five of World Aquatics' priorities this post-Singapore World Champs season, it might look something like this:

• The New HQ in the Hungarian capital;
• The global regulator's launch of its Bahrain development centre;
• The World Cup Tour as the premier non-championship, pro-swim showcase;
• The Related slow start of the new swimmers' pension scheme; and ...
• The $800m the Enhanced Games wants as compensation from World Aquatics, WADA and USA Swimming in what may go down as one of the biggest and most illogical sulks in sports history

I'd like to add 'in no particular order' but I think it reasonable to suggest that the list ranks the topics in size of investment: for example, at a glance, World Aquatics/Fina has spent more on property and related moves in recent times than athletes have received in World Cup prize money for more than an entire Olympic cycle.

If anyone at Work Aquatics ever wants to have that discussion with me and explain why I';m somehow mistaken, I look forward to the moment and to hearing the reasons why Olympic city Lausanne was old hat, and Budapest was the place to be.

My list above ends with that $800m challenge from the doping-friendly project that it is wholly correct to reject. It's a big sum but not as big as deal as we might imagine, for some reasons not far removed from the bluster of a U.S. president who chucks figures of $1bn around as the price of a claim for a case against a foreign broadcaster - namely the BBC - he has absolutely no chance of hitting the bullseye with. It's the game-show syndrome and mindset in play - shout loud and roll the dice. Reality: yes, there will be costs in the process of seeing off the noise but the real cost of it all so far is, relatively (even if an hour of effort and a legal letter can cost more than your family's weekly grocery bill) speaking, tiny. The likelihood of that $800m ever being handed over is minuscule - and the doping-friendly folk better hope that it never happens: if you blow up the talent pool you say you want and a have right to access ... guess what.

Even the very few athletes and coach who jumped ship might then appreciate what it feels like to be homeless because there's no home left to go back to.

Meanwhile, we all know that the $800m price tag reflects a tall claim of an alien organisation that on the one hand rejects and refuses to adhere to some of the most important rules of World Aquatics, yet also wants to own as an asset the boast, brag and braggadocio of a manipulated swimmer 'breaking' records that belong o swimmers who must submit whereabouts, must agree to regular out-of-competition tests and rules designed to ensure the closest possible version of fair and safe sport in a complex world in which the higher the unconscious 'living-the-dream' incentive, the greater the temptation weighs heavily.

The two worlds and realms of regulated/tested and unregulated/untested do not belong together, and it is wholly reasonable for the untested world to keep the tested world at bay with structural rules that allow people to choose a one-way ticket: leave if you must but recognise that there is no way back. The examples where incompatibility of position make one-way tickets and protection of realms essential are legion in many places, sectors and roles in the world. I think you'll all be able to think of two or three without too much strain.

Different beasts, different rules, different realms - and one loves ripping the throat and life out of the other ... so, having a bylaw that says the swimmer, the coach and others must choose: either you're a fox or a chicken. The World Aquatics bylaw 10 is perfectly reasonable.

If people wish to trade their "heroes for ghosts" and exchange "a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage", as Pink Floyd put it, let them, but tell them it was their choice, and one that is wholly incompatible with the rules of engagement in the world they leave behind.

All of that said, it is also fair to say that swimming, in the tested, anti-doping world, makes an easy target for any opponent looking to unearth the consequences of rot, weak responses, questionable priorities, wilful blindness and other stuff that draws everything from a scoff to a belly laugh when I comes to the mantra 'athlete's first' when clearly they have not been that for a very long time, our last FORUM, a four-parter highlighting a prime example:

Part 4 (with links to the other 3) - Deep Clean the Olympics:

FORUM: How To Heal The Harm Of East Germany’s Doping Heist

Part 4 of 4 - At a time when the Enhanced Games is delighted that the Olympic Movement and international swimming has a history booked overflowing with doping results, it’s time to get the clean up done. Here’s how to approach it…

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

We'll look at each of those topics as we make our way through this latest mini-series focusing on the challenges facing swimming at a point in its evolution where the roots to its amateur past run deep and the acceptance of what constitutes professionalism is largely confined to the work of athletes, coaches sports scientists, psychologists and others at the coal face of performance sport.

There's professionalism, too, among the professional staff and contracted experts working in and with governance, of course but at every level, global regulator down to local club, there remains something of a twilight zone in which the boss, the decision-maker, the figure head, the man or woman who knows how the grace-and-favour game of sports politics works in a bubble of self-protectionism, is a rank amateur dressed in executive clothing.

Important to note that the sport of swimming, like many other sports, relies on the goodwill and often financial support of mums, dads, volunteers and experts in fields not directly related to sport yet clearly helpful to the running of clubs and organisations. I am not referring to their contribution as 'amateur'. I am talking about people who are in positions of high influence without the skills required for the guardianship and governorship they are charged with delivering.

So, with that general introduction done, let's look at our first topic:

Contracts ...