Brazil’s Jose Finkel Trophy Begins on Tuesday in Santos

2017 Jose Finkel Trophy

• August 8th-12th, 2017
• Santos, Sao Paolo, Brazil – UNISANTA hosting
• 50 LCM pool
• Live results

The 2017 Jose Finkel Trophy, Brazil’s Winter-ending National Championship meet, kicks off on Tuesday in the pool of Unisanta.

Most of Brazil’s World Championships team, including 50 backstroke gold medalist Etiene Medeiros, will be in attendance at the meet. The most notable absence will be men’s 50 free silver medalist Bruno Fratus, the only pool swimmer to win a medal in an individual Olympic event for Brazil in Budapest. He was dropped by his long-time club Pinheiros after the Olympics, and is thus less bound to these meets that serve as crucial team competitions.

Pinheiros are the meet’s defending champions, winning by 550 points over Minas Tenis.

Absent from the meet are the foreign mercenaries that historically had been brought in to support team scoring at this meet. After a year littered with scandal, budget-tightening, and many of the country’s top young swimmers leaving the country, the budgets to import swimmers for national championship meets seems to have dried up.

Returning for the meet will be Larissa Oliveira, who missed out on the World Championships after a freak car crash forced her to undergo surgery after a tree branch fell and landed on her car, perforating her right thigh. Oliveira swam her first races back in early July, where she won 3 events at a regional meet.