The Task Force report into the death of Fran Crippen in a 10km race off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on October 23 last year has been returned to the panel of experts who penned it with a note from the FINA HQ saying: you've gone too far, please rewrite.

The resulting delay will dictate that a report originally due in March will not now be seen by members of the FINA Bureau until after the federation's ruling clan gather in July for a meeting in Shanghai that coincides with the world championships. 

SwimNews understands that the Task Force of experts, which includes three medical doctors, is now considering how to reframe work that at this stage can longer be considered to be entirely independent, given that the latest instruction to 'think again' came from a federation whose very organisation is at the heart of questions over the death of Fran Crippen.

One senior source indicated that the panel of experts is minded to stick largely to their original report. The source told SwimNews: "They are serious, professional people and they want to put together a decent report. The integrity of these people means that they are taking their role seriously and they will not put their names to something that they are not entirely happy with."

It is believed that Task Force conclusions include a raft of recommendations on how open water and the governance of the sport could be improved, including making rule changes designed to avoid a repeat of the first death of an athlete in FINA competition.

FINA appointed the Task Force on November 1 and called on it "to investigate the causes and circumstances of the tragic loss of open water swimmer Fran Crippen (USA), on October 23, 2010, in the last leg of the FINA 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup in Fujairah (UAE)".

The panel consists of FINA's liaison Chairman Gunnar Werner, a retired Swedish judge, senior vice-president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport and a FINA Honorary Member, and four experts: Dr. Harold Vervaecke, PhD (BEL), Secretary General of the International Life Saving Federation (ILS); Doctor in Sports and Physical Education; Dr. Antonio Pelliccia, MD (ITA), Scientific Director of the Institute of Sports Medicine of CONI and World Authority on Cardiovascular Disease and Sports Medicine (specialised in sudden death), Greg Towle (AUS), a leading open water coach from Australia with a depth of experience of open water conditions; and Dr. Tobie Smith, MD (USA), a former world open water champion, now a doctor of family medicine in New York and an advocate for safety in open water.

None of the above are much used to being told to rewrite script they have compiled based on their expert knowledge and sound grasp of the subject at hand. However, senior FINA figures have been told that the first report produced by the task force exceeded the "mission and scope" of the task set for them by FINA. 

SwimNews understands that the recommendations made by the Task Force experts were deemed by FINA executives - those include Cornel Marculescu, the executive director, president of the federation Julio Maglione and honorary secretary Paolo Barelli, though it is not clear who agreed the latest move - to have gone beyond definitions, such as 'how and why' the American swimmer died, that FINA had in mind when it called its inquiry. The decision to return to sender with a request to rewrite has now been revealed to FINA Bureau members who appear to have taken no part in the decision-making process.

The delay almost certainly means that USA Swimming's independent inquiry into Fran Crippen's death will be ready before the FINA Bureau gets to see the full report of its own Task Force. USA Swimming met this week to consider progress in the independent inquiry that is being led by WADA and IOC leading light Dick Pound.

Meanwhile, the delay in FINA's inquiry report means that what was named the Fran Crippen memorial 2011 FINA 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup by the international federation before the Crippen family stepped in, gets underway in Santos, Brazil, next week, on April 17. That will proceed without any recommendations from the Task Force having had a chance of being fed into the sport. The UAE round of the marathon circuit, originally a provisional date in the 2011 diary, no longer appears in the event listing on the FINA website after Maddy Crippen, sister of Fran, wrote to FINA and asked them to remove the name of her brother from the title of the event. FINA had renamed its event without asking the Crippen family. The family had not and would not give its blessing to such a move, Maddy Crippen said last month.

Dick Shoulberg, coach to Fran Crippen at Germantown Academy and long-time friend of the Crippen family, told SwimNews: "I personally do not think there should be any FINA-sanctioned meets until the report comes and I don’t think there should be a meet in Dubai in 2011, which is still on the schedule." 

His hope rests in the USA inquiry report and what that may mean for the future of open water swimming and the need, as he sees it, for the USA to step up on its own education of a sport whose status he sums up well when saying: "Once the [Olympic] gold medal was presented to the athletes, the dreams became bigger, the prize became more tangible and it [the sport and its athletes] is something that we must protect at all times." 

There is a feeling in the sport that while more events were added to the race calendar and greater activity was encouraged as the Olympic arena was added to the prize, development of support structures, including crisis management strategies, did not evolve in tune with the pace of growth.

Fran Crippen lost his life under circumstances that many in the sport believe to have been avoidable. Before he died, Crippen had called on senior US figures to help improve the lot of open water swimmers, his letters and notes including some aspects of safety that concerned him. SwimNews's extensive coverage of events culminated in an article headed Fran Crippen: The Questions Facing FINA on January 26.

Issues of concern relating to the tragic events of October 23 include the late switch in race venue; allegations that the fears of coaches and managers were not addressed at a pre-race meeting; water temperatures over 30C and surface temperatures over 40C during a noon race in which several swimmers complained of feeling ill, some requiring post-race hospitalisation; a lack of any crisis management strategy when disaster struck during the last phase of the two-hour race.

When the report finally does appear, one of the inevitable questions resulting from the reason given for delay is likely to be: what's been left in, and what's been taken out.