Cornel Marculescu, Executive Director of FINA, has stepped in to ensure that swimmers racing for clubs beyond their own nation at FINA World Cup events can be identified as such. A new code of CLB will be used on all Omega world cup result sheets at future events.

The move, made swiftly in light of a Serbian sprinter appearing on the result sheet of the first round of the cup in Dubai under the code "UAE" last weekend, will be widely welcomed, designed as it is to avoid confusion over whether an athlete may or may not have switched nation.

In a letter to all organisers, Omega and the FINA Technical Swimming Commission and the federation's media commission, the director notes that swimmers are in line with rules when they race for foreign clubs on the FINA/Arena World Cup circuit. 

However, for the sake of clarity, Marculescu writes:

"After consulting the FINA TSC Commission and the FINA Press Commission, the identification of swimmers entered by clubs should be as follows in order to avoid any misunderstanding and to have consistency throughout all the legs of the Series:

• club swimmers of the same sports nationality as the Host Member Federation shall be identified on the scoreboard and start/results sheets with the abbreviation of the respective Host Member Federation country (SWE-RUS-GER-SIN-CHN-JPN) or with the code CLB (identification for a club entry).
• club swimmers from a sports nationality other than the Host Member Federation shall be identified on the scoreboard/start/results sheets with the code CLB only (identification for a club entry).
• Abbreviations of clubs’ names are not allowed, only the code CLB, as otherwise it will create confusion between country codes and club codes."

The directive comes into immediate force and will be first used at the Stockholm round of the cup this weekend.