An introductory meeting for potential bidders to host the 2025 and 2027 World Championships included Russia, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine and the United States, but not Australia, which had previously expressed interest in hosting.
That info comes from the Russian swimming federation, per their website. The FINA meeting took place in Lausanne, Switzerland. Potential host cities represented were Kazan (Russia), Belgrade (Serbia) and Budapest (Hungary), with unknown cities in the Ukraine and the United States. Kazan and Budapest have both hosted long course World Championships recently; Kazan hosted in 2015 and Budapest in 2017.
Both cities are also lined up to host Short Course World Championships in the next five years: Kazan in 2022 and Budapest in 2024.
Belgrade would also be a repeat host: the hosted the first edition of these championships back in 1973.
Gwangju, South Korea will host the next edition of the World Championships this coming summer, with the 2021 event going to Fukuoka, Japan and the 2023 event to Doha, Qatar.
The Ukraine and the United States have never hosted a long course FINA World Championships event. The only time the event has been in North America was in 2005, when Montreal, Canada hosted. Short Course Worlds, on the other hand, were in Windsor, Canada as recently as 2016, and the United States did host a Short Course Worlds back in 2004 in Indianapolis.
Australia hasn’t hosted a long course World Championships since 2007, though they hosted three times between 1991 and 2007. Serbia has also never hosted the event.
The potential host cities for the 2025 and 2027 World Championships will have to finalize their interest by the end of May, when FINA officializes the list of candidate cities.
Two pivotal but very simple reasons why AUS never progressed beyond considering a bid to actually proceeding.
Firstly; a reluctance from local & state governments to provide any form of underwriting. The public appetite for public funding for sports has drastically reduced in comparison for calls for increased infrastructure spending (esp health & education). Whilst not completely against such events, the current evidence is that they will prefer to put any such money towards events that bring in more domestic and intl tourism AND better showcase the attractions of their city/region (ie World Tour cycling events, the existing AUS Open tennis, F1 GP) than an essentially static event like an intel swimming meet.
Second is essentially a flow-on effect;… Read more »
Gives the Aussies an excuse when they don’t swim well….. again
Really ? Was that comment really necessary ?
I chuckled.
Thanks Braden lol. What’s the population of the USA again ? Can’t quite remember 😜
Correction – The first world championships (1973) were held in Belgrade – so it would be a repeat for them too.
The logistics of hosting the World Championships would be much simpler if you didn’t also have diving, water polo and artistic swimming. These sports are very different in nature and it has always struck me as strange that they come under the one organization. If swimming had its own governing body it would make the hosting of the world titles a much smaller project therefore more cities would have the capacity to stage the event. It would also improve the governance of the sport if you didn’t have all these disparate elements.
Good points, and maybe FINA should consider splitting those events up. Especially these days considering that the Olympic movement is facing huge hurdles for host cities, mostly because of facilities. Making FINA world titles as a big multi-sport event is a big ask.
The USA, Germany, UK, France, and even maybe some minor economies could host part of that, maybe even at the same time. It’s not like NCAA, where the diving is part of the competition and operates under the same head coach who should be at the same site. In the USA, our several governing bodies are all separate, so it would make sense.
I think the biggest infrastructural problem is the difference in facilities for pool… Read more »
Kazan and Budapest are very likely to get it again. No strong competition here.
The way I see it, there could only be a few US cities that could host. They have to have facilities with ample seating for pool swimming, diving,, water polo, plus nearby venues for open water and for High Diving.
Indy: Pool swimming in a temporary pool in Lucas Oil Stadium; diving and water polo at IUPUI; water polo group matches at places like Carmel and other nearby facilities; open water in some lake; etc. Plus, national team staging at various pools, of which Indy has plenty.
Atlanta: swimming at the Mercedes stadium; diving and water polo at Georgia Tech; water polo group play at Emory; swimming in Lake Lanier; team staging camps at Dynamo, UGA, Savannah, Emory, etc.
LA:… Read more »
i doubt USC would allow their baseball field to be used an extra year for another swim meet. I really can’t get excited about this because I assume that we need to bribe FINA to get the meet.
Assuming USA Swimming is paying for this all, would they really want to rent Mercedes Benz Stadium at Atlanta because it’s so new? It probably would be crazy expensive just to rent the place out, right?
There are 74,000 seats in the Mercedes Benz Stadium. I don’t know how much it costs to break even on rental of a venue that size and that’s brand new, but I bet you have to sell a lot more than the 15,000-20,000 seats that are usually sold for a World Championships to get there. Booking a stadium like that is basically taking a big ole gamble that everything that the ISL thinks is true is actually true, and that by 2025 the big 4 sports in America will be the big 5 sports, with swimming being #5.