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News Round-Up: Dubai Pays Up On Time

Jan 27, 2010  - Craig Lord

Dubai: The organizing committee for the next world short-course championships, Dubai, has met its February 1 deadline and paid what is described in some reports today as a "$500,000 fee" to FINA as collateral for hosting the winter showcase event. That move would seem to suggest that the winners of the 2010 bid battle indeed to follow through. Even so, reports still suggest that the story is not yet over as far as Dubai actually hosting the event in December this year: it still has a fee to pay to cover expenses for television rights to host the World Championships and there have been discussions, sources say, with Istanbul, scheduled to be the 2012 host, as a potential replacement in 2010. Contact has also been made to two potential hosts in the US.

FINA: The 1st FINA World Aquatics Convention will unfold in Punta del Este, Uruguay, from September 27 to 29 this year. Under the slogan "Together We Can Make Aquatics Bigger!", the international federation states that the convention will be "a unique opportunity to gather more than 700 of the Aquatic protagonists: Olympic partners, National Federations, Sponsors & Broadcasters, Event Organisers, Bidding & Host Cities, Media, partners, suppliers and companies in the Aquatics and sports event business."  FINA will present its "vision for the Aquatic Sports in 21st century" and explore "new horizons, developments, communications platforms and technologies, share knowledge and develop ideas, build up networking and establish new relationships." Among those invited to attend the event are all FINA federations and officials from the IOC, UN, LOCOG 2012, the Rio 2016 OC, FINA event hosts up to 2013, prospective future bidders, companies, consultants and merchandisers. No mention of athletes as yet but surely there will be some there. The goal of the gathering, says FINA, is" to meet the challenges to better overcome them: administration, promotion, media attention, organisation of events, generation of revenue, economical impact, relations with NOCs and other sport federations." The objective: "to learn, to plan ahead and to better act".

Spain: World shiny suit 50 'fly record holder has told EFE, the Spanish agency that 2010 will be  “difficult, full of strife and problematic as far as results are concerned after the ban on high-tech suits". Not that hi-tech, experts in fabrics say - just shiny, slippery, slidey, made of non-textile stuff apt to skew the result and engineer an unfair race. In 2010, Munoz will be in the same non-boat and textile apparel as everyone else, after FINA laid down a set of guidelines designed to reintroduce fairness and standardised race conditions to the pool. The Spaniard is among those who was oft heard to say in 2009 "it's not the suit, it's the swimmer". In that sense, he should have no difficulty at all in 2010: he will doubtless just stand up and show us that it is indeed all about the swimmer, not the suit. And to that end, the swimmer will next week return to hard training in Barcelona at the same centre as he set out on his seasonal campaign in the past four years.