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No Comeback But Stockwell In A Race

Nov 10, 2011  - Craig Lord

News Round-Up:

Australia: Mark Stockwell, winner of two silver medals and a bronze for Australia at the 1984 Olympic Games and a former Commonwealth Games relay champion, faces a nervous 24 hours ahead of the vote to determine the host of the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Stockwell, married to one of the most versatile swimmers in history, American Olympic medley champion Tracy Caulkins (the couple have four children), is the Gold Coast bid chairman in charge of bringing the Games to Surfers Paradise. 

The opposition is Hambantota on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, a country where terrorist troubles kept tourist numbers well down on potential for many a long year. Hambantota is said to be in the midst of a massive building boom and has promised to deliver new stadiums, an international airport and other infrastructure by 2016. Facilities, of course, are not enough, as anyone who attended the corruption-soaked Commonwealth Games in Delhi last year will tell you. The Sri Lankan government is funding the Hambantota bid and hopes to use the Games as a catalyst for growth in a part of the country devastated by the 2004 tsunami.

Stockwell told Australian reporters on the eve of the vote in St. Kitts and Nevis tomorrow: "I would say about half of the delegates still may not have made up their mind. Sri Lanka has taken a totally different approach to us and their approach will strike a chord with some developing nations." The Gold Coast bid centres on sustainability, its plan to use upgraded existing facilities in southeast Queensland state, including cycling and shooting facilities which were used during the 1982 Commonwealth Games in nearby Brisbane.

USA: The NCAA college sports system in the United States has been in crisis for a while now. Colleges have long been a nurturing place for generations of swimming talent, not only American but European, South American, African and even Australian and Asian. The world swimming rankings are awash with the names of swimmers who are in or came through college programmes in the US. In times of austerity, colleges, like governments, commercial enterprises and private households, run their eye over their cloth in search of places to make cuts. 

Popularity scores high, football, baseball the sports that bring in the big money. In that environment, swimming is high-cost, low-return to the bean counters. The crisis has made the mainstream media in the US and solutions include opening up college sport to the free market, which would serve as a revenue source for those who like their ball games, while allowing the likes of Phelps and Franklin a college career without denying them the right to take $1m in corporate backing or $100,000 from the FINA/Arena world cup prize pot. 

As you might expect in the US, there is much talk of money and the cost of things and the future will be decided on that basis with less regard than might be healthy paid to solidarity and the less parochial and incalculable benefits to be had from producing the world's top swim team among many of the world's top Olympic sports teams, generation come, generation go. For those in the system and those outside it who would like to understand the issues, you'll find no better place to fire the brain than this article by Casey Barrett Cap And Goggles, while the arguments for free market freedom in college sport are poured over by Sports Illustrated.

Italy: An Italian national team including Filippo Magnini and comeback 2009 world 1500m free champion Alessia Filippi will race at the Dutch Cup in Eindhoven December 2-4. The squad: men - Belotti, Benatti, Bizzarri, Giorgetti, Laugeni, Leonardi, Lestingi, Maglia, Magnini, Malerba, Pizzamiglio, Ranfagni, Santucci; women - Gemo, Filippi, Nesti. A second group of Italian swimmers will race at the Saint Dizier s/c meet in France on November 18-20.

Spain: Some of the best swimmers from Spain and Poland are warming up for the European s/c championships in Poland next month at a meet in Barcelona.  Winners at a glance: Men: 50m free - Konrad Czerniak (POL) 22.25; 100m backstroke - Miguel Rando 54.07; 100m butterfly - Rafael Muñoz 55.02. Women - 100, 200, 400m freestyle: Melania Costa 55.37, 1:55.82, 4:04.43; 800m free: Erika Villaecija 8:27.92; 50m backstroke Mercedes Peris 28.40; 100m butterfly: Otylia Jedrzejczak (POL) 58.91.