The board of the World Swimming Coaches Association today voted to create the World Swimming Association, a body that will have its own constitution, one that will serve as a model of how coaches would like FINA to behave in future. The move coincided with a demand from US head coach Mark Schubert for FINA to place coaches at the top table of the sport.

The vote on the WSA formation was taken against a backdrop of deep dissension in the face of what coaches believe to be the "undemocratic behaviour" of the FINA executive as plans are made to change the constitution of the 102-year-old international federation. Last week, a paper entitled The End of FINA was circulated in coaching circles around the world.

George Block, president of WSCA, called on coaches to find a way of showing FINA "the good governance that we want FINA to embrace". Given that coaches have no voice in FINA, he said, then forming a ghost body with a constitution that could be held up in the light of comparison with what FINA's three-man executive is planning for constitutional change in 2011 was the only way to show FINA members of what they were missing out on: the right to have a fair say in the future organisation of world aquatic sports. Block said: "We have seen backsliding on suits and now a huge backsliding on democracy. It is clear that FINA may be the problem not the solution." 

John Leonard, the executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association, reminded members of the WSCA board that proposals submitted by Asia, Europe and the Americas for change to the FINA Constitution, to be voted on by an Extraordinary Congress in Shanghai next July, had been rejected by the FINA Executive, with more than 200 domestic federations around the world being told that only the 22 members of the ruling Bureau would be allowed to submit agenda items.

"For the past 102 years, member federations have always had a right to submit proposals for change, and they don't come any bigger than changing the constitution. Who the hell wants to give up their right to have their say?" asked Leonard.

US head coach Schubert noted that within FINA the term having your say was relative. As a member of the FINA Coaches Commission charged with the task of supposedly advising FINA's top brass, he had come to view that the role of the commission went only as far as Cornel Marculescu, FINA's executive director, wanted it to go. And those who spoke up against FINA, as Alan Thompson, former Australia head coach had done as the suits crisis came to a crunch, were simply removed. Asked by veteran US coach Peter Daland what the state of the FINA coaches commission was, Schubert said: "Its a bunch of fluff ... it is only as powerful [a voice for coaches] as he allows it to be. He tells us what we can speak about. Coaches have much, much more to say and deserve a much bigger voice that they have right now." 

WSCA is now calling on FINA to include these 10 points agreed by Asia, the Americas and Europe among more than 100 proposals for change to the constitution. Those include the right of a coaches commission to elect its own chairman and for the chair to then be added to the FINA Bureau, giving coaches a real say in the running of their affairs and the governance of the sport that they spend their lives dedicated too and earn their living from.

Schubert urged coaches to think further: alongside Bureau representation for coaches and athletes, the heads of the technical commissions who are experts in their fields ought also to have a seat at the top table. Right now, expert voices are confined to the role of advisors who are not then present when expert opinion is discussed and voted on by the Bureau and the executive. Effectively, what Schubert is proposing is a ruling body at the helm of FINA that is the most professional possible, with experts including coaches, athletes, and laymen and women alongside the sports politicians who currently hold sway.

Banned coaches:

The WSCA board is to investigate ways of drawing up lists of banned coaches in a series of reciprocal deals between nations that would ensure that rogues cannot simply move across borders and carrying on coaching despite their crimes. 

The move is not only aimed at events in the US, where the federation has tightened its athlete protection regime in response to a series of coach abuse cases and revelations that dozens of coaches have in fact been banned from swimming in the past 20 years. 

The case of Canadian former coach Cecil Russell, banned for life, was raised. While banned from the deck in every Canadian pool and banned for life by FINA, Russell was to be found coaching on deck at two rounds of the Mare Nostrum Tour in Europe this year and coach complaints fell on the deaf ears of organisers that actively broke FINA rules. 

Russell has, unsuccessfully, attempted to overturn his ban. FINA's latest anti-doping ruling against him states: An application by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) and co-applicants Swimming Natation Canada (SNC) and Coaches of Canada (CofC) to have swimming coach Cecil Russell’s reinstatement decision set aside has been upheld and referred back to adjudicator Mr. Graham Mew for reconsideration based on additional evidence. On 10 of August 2009, the decision has been set aside on the basis that it was obtained by fraud. With the setting aside of the reinstatement decision, Mr. Russell is again under a lifetime ban making him ineligible to participate in sport in any role.

Russell was originally served a life ban by Canada in 1995 after being found guilty of conspiring to traffic in anabolic steroids.