Matt Sates, Maggie MacNeil Lead the Chase for $12k After Day 1 in Toronto

2022 FINA WORLD CUP – TORONTO

• Friday, October 28 – Sunday, October 30, 2022
• Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC), Toronto, Canada
• SCM (25 meters)
• Start Times
  • Prelims: 9:30 am local (ET)
  • Finals: 6:00 pm local (ET)
• Meet Central
• Psych Sheet
• Live Results (Omega)
• Live Stream (FINA YouTube)

Canadian Maggie MacNeil and American Shaine Casas are currently in the lead for the matching $12,000 grand prizes up-for-grabs at this week’s FINA World Cup Series stop in Toronto.

Through one day of competition, Casas has a pair of wins: in the 100 IM and the 200 backstroke. As the day’s only double winner, that puts him in the driver’s seat, though South African Matt Sates has the highest power point swim so far with his 400 free.

Sates, who won the top men’s prize in Berlin and the overall series last year, has many of his best races yet to come. With a limit of 3 scoring swims per swimmer at each meet, he could catch Casas in wins, with power points then serving as the tiebreaker.

On the women’s side, LSU 5th-year swimmer Maggie MacNeil leads the way thanks to a win in the 50 back and an 2nd-place finish in the 50 free. While MacNeil dropped the 100 back final for Saturday (she was the 2nd seed), she has a chance to add another win in the 50 fly. She still has remaining entries in her best event, the 100 fly, and the 100 free left to boost her score on Sunday.

MacNeil is an NCAA athlete, and while recent easing of Name, Image, and Likeness rules have impacted the way that NCAA athletes can earn money, there are still limits to prize money awards. In the recent past, however, federations have found loopholes to these rules, distributing money through Olympic committees as a workaround.

While MacNeil looks good so far on the women’s side, still lurking is Siobhan Haughey, who won the Berlin stop and is currently ranked 16th in Toronto. She is only scheduled to swim one race each day, so her full score won’t be obvious until the end of the meet.

Berlin runner-up Beata Nelson also has a lot of points left to score. She was 2nd in her lone final on Friday in the 100 IM behind France’s Beryl Gastaldello, who also should contend for the top prize money.

For a sense of what sort of scores are ‘good’ and not, in Berlin, it took 58.5 total points (19.5/event) to win the women’s series, 52.1 total points (17.36/event) to finish top 5, and 33.6 (11.2/event) to finish top 20, or in the money. For men, it took 58.3 (19.43/event) to win, 53.4 points (17.8/event) to finish top 5, and 31.5 total points (10.5/event) to finish in the money.

This math means that making three finals at a meet gives a swimmer a very good chance (but not a guarantee) of finishing in the money.

• See the full Berlin stop scoring breakdown here.

How Does the Scoring Work:

The scoring system appears complex, but upon breakdown is really quite simple.

A swimmer’s score in any given event has two components:

• A placement score (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1, by place)
• A power score (FINA power points, divided by 100, rounded down to the nearest tenth)

Once those scores are calculated, each swimmer’s three best events are added up to give them an individual score for the meet.

In essence, the power points wind up being a tie-breaker of sorts between swimmers who score the same, or very-similar, number of placement points. With the depth of this year’s field, it’s very difficult (though not entirely impossible) to overcome better place rankings with better power point rankings.

Scores from each of the three meets are added up to give swimmers an overall series score. Though it is not explicitly required, the depth of this year’s field will make it nearly impossible to compete for the big series prize money without competing in all three events.

Prize Money

Per meet, per gender:

Overall series, per gender:

Women’s Standings – Toronto – Through Day 1

Men’s Standings – Toronto – Through Day 1