Organizers of the 2014 Dubai World Cup have announced five more of the series’ stars who will return for next year’s edition, bring even more hope that this year’s event will be as heavily attended as last year’s breakthrough series.
The five new swimmers committed to the meet are:
- Kenneth To, Australia (2012 overall series winner)
- Mireia Belmonte Garcia, Spain
- Bobby Hurley, Australia (2013 3rd-place)
- Daryna Zevina, Ukraine
- Daniel Gyurta, Hungary
Those five add to a group of previously announced participants:
- Katinka Hosszu, Hungary (2013 and 2014 overall series winner)
- Chad le Clos, South Africa (2013 overall series winner)
- Alia Atkinson, Jamaica (2013 series runner-up)
- Roland Schoeman, South Africa
By our count, that’s 125 individual event winners from last year’s series who are publicly committed to swim in Dubai, and for most of those swimmers, that trip will be made more valuable on a double with Doha (though Doha hasn’t announced any names yet).
What’s more, many of these swimmers have proven to be fantastic in short course – All put one of the 9 above (Schoeman) has a World Short Course medal from either 2010 or 2012, and most of them have gold medals.
The dates for the 2014 FINA World Cup Series:
Cluster 1
August 27-28 Doha (QAT)
August 31 – September 1 Dubai (UAE)
Cluster 2
September 29-30 Hong Kong (HKG)
October 4-5 Moscow (RUS)
Cluster 3
October 24-25 Beijing (CHN)
October 28-29 Tokyo (JPN)
November 1-2 Singapore (SIN)
Le Clos and Hosszu can gold-mine World Cup series every year until they retire
You are probably right. Would it not be better for the sport if the US swim stars also competed on a consistent basis? Given their college experience of short course, what is stopping them? Prize money is pretty good at the top, but maybe it needs to deepen.
Schema -south africa?
whoknows – don’t understand the question I’m afraid…