Russian Kirill Prigoda has publicly confirmed that he plans on attending all seven of the stops on the 2018 FINA World Cup circuit, with the first stop coming in his home country in Kazan from September 7-9.
Russian head coach Sergey Chepik has stated that athletes invited to the World Cup by the International Swimming Federation, including Prigoda, will be exempt from competing at the Russian Short Course Championships (as it coincides with the Tokyo stop in November) and their World Cup results will count towards qualifying for the 2018 Short Course World Championships instead. Those Championships will take place from December 11-16 in Hangzhou, China.
Unlike past years, the World Cup competitions will be a little more spread out in 2018. It all starts in Kazan from September 7-9, and then it will shift to Doha from the 13th to the 15th. Both of those competitions will be raced LC, and then the rest will be SC. This is the first time the series has combined both long and short course competitions.
There will then be a two-week break before they head to Eindhoven and Budapest, and then the series will finish up with three Asian stops in November in Beijing, Tokyo and Singapore. For the full World Cup schedule click here.
Last year, Prigoda finished 3rd to Chad Le Clos and Vlad Morozov in World Cup points with an impressive 270, proving to be a threat both in the breaststroke events and the IMs.
After that World Cup showing, the 22-year-old went on to gold in the 200, silver in the 50, and bronze in the 100 breast at the Short Course European Championships in Copenhagen, breaking the Russian National Record in all thee. He is within striking distance of all three SCM world records in breaststroke, sitting just four-tenths outside of the 50 and 100 marks and 0.67 outside the 200m record.
Can’t wait to see what Michael Andrew can do