RIO DE JANEIRO - The final competition of the 2003-2004 FINA World Cup will get underway tomorrow (Friday, 6 Feb) with the preliminaries at 5:30 pm, and the finals on Saturday 7 Feb in the morning.

Leading contenders for the FINA top performances awards are present in Rio as follows:

Men
Dragos Coman (ROM) currently in 5th place among men with his 400 freestyle of 3:41.06 (986) from Berlin. He will need to improve about three seconds to move among the top three.

Jose Martin Meolans (ARG) in 6th place with his 100 freetyle of 47.61 (981) from Berlin. He will need to score 993 in either the 50 (21.40) or 100 (47.23) free to move into contention.

Stefan Herbst (GER) currently in 8th place with a best time of 1:45.15 (973) would have to score 993 and improve to 1:43.74.

Oleg Lisogor (UKR) currently tied for 9th place among top performing men for his 50 breast time of 26.97 (972), he'll need to move to 993 or better 26.59 or 58.60 for the 50 and 100 breaststroke. He is the current world cercord holder in the 50 breast with 26.26 from 2002.

Making his first appearance on the current world cup circuit is George Bovell (TRI) whose best event is the 200 IM (Pan American Games winner in 2003, 5th at the Worlds in July), he is also entered in the 100 free, and 100 IM.

Not in attandance are the top prize contenders:
1041 Ed Moses (USA) 2:02.92 200 breast world record in Berlin and winner of 13 World Cup breaststroke events in four competitions.

1000 Jason Lezak (USA) 46.98 100 free, and 993 Ryk Neethling (RSA) in the 400 free in Berlin.

Women
Top contenders in attendance in Rio:
996 Camelia Potec (ROM) 4:02.00 400 free in Berlin,
990 Yana Klochkova (UKR) 2:09.79 in the 200 IM from East Meadow last weekend, she'll need to go a 2:08.25 to move ahead of Moravcova.

1007 Martina Moravcova (SVK) 100 fly 56.90 in Stockholm, with the top women's performance, had decided to let her times stand and is not in Rio.

Missing from the Americas portion is Petria Thomas (AUS) who had the second performance in the series in the 200 fly 2:05.68 (1000 points) and has dropped out of contention.

Making her only world cup appareance is Amanda Bear (USA) 2003 long course world champion and record holder.

FINA Prizes are up for grabs as follows:
In each event $1,500, 1,000, and 500 US for top three places (8 x 102,000) Overall in the series top three performance by men and women $US 50,000, 30,000, and 20,000 (200,000) provided winners have participated in each of the three continental series Asia/Oceania/Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

World record bonus is $4,000 US, and four have been established so far.
Total available prize monies is $US1,032,000.