5 cities have been announced as interested bidders to host the 2022 or 2024 World Short Course Swimming Championships, FINA announced on Tuesday.
- Chinese Taipei (Taiwan/Republic of China)
- Germany
- Budapest, Hungary
- Kazan, Russia
- Switzerland
The winners will follow the next three hosts, already announced: Windsor, Canada in 2016; Hangzhou, China in 2018; and Abu Dhabi in 2020.
None of the 5 interested bidders have previously hosted the World Short Course Championships as a city, though Russia has previously hosted the 2002 edition in Moscow.
Further, Kazan (2015), (West) Berlin, (West) Germany (1978), and Budapest (2017) will all have long course World Championship hosting experience by the time these two meets arrive.
As part of a meeting held in Lausanne, cities were told of FINA’s view of the “benefit,” “economic impact,” and “legacy” that they say are generated from these events.
Each federation or city, depending on the bidder, will now confirm their intent to bid, and each will give their formal presentation to the FINA Bureau in July 2017. The winners of the bids will be announced at next year’s long course World Championships in Budapest.
The timeline for this announcement, especially the 2024 event, is becoming longer-and-longer, possibly to give hosts more times to prepare. Prior announcement timelines:
- 2020 (Abu Dhabi) bid award was made in July of 2015.
- 2018 (Hangzhou, China) bid award was made in December of 2014
- 2016 (Windsor, Canada) bid award was made in December of 2012.
Why does the United States never host this meet?
Because we smart
Too expensive- USAS gets better value for its money through the grand prix/Arena pro series, and none of the cities big enough to host feel like it’s a good enough return on the investment by their sports commissions to pay the extremely high fees and comped hotel stays required by FINA for a world championship event.
If the national level government isn’t willing to subsidize (and the USOC and/or Washington DC are definitely not) the numbers for that kind of meet don’t justify a bid.
Kazan 2015 had 30,000 volunteers. Also security checks similar to airports every time someone entered any arena or hotel. This is hard to accumulate for most countries.
But it has, in 2004. The host city was Indianapolis and the short course championships are way smaller then the long course meets. For one thing it’s only swimming, none of the other diciplines are participaiting.
Kazan. Really?