Although SwimSwam reported that funding was recently cut for the American open water swimming program and that American swimmers are angry and frustrated, we are certain that the future for the elite swimmers during the 2016 Olympic quadrennial is increasingly bright and financially rewarding.
While the American swimmers will have to pay for their coaches to join them to FINA 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup races, there are now many more professional races and sponsorship opportunities for them as a result of the sport’s growth.
Swimmers like Christine Jennings (shown above with Petar Stoychev) know first-hand about the myriad opportunities that allow her to travel from Brazil to Poland, from the Cayman Islands to South Africa, from Tiburon to Tokyo. Entrepreneurial race directors know that top swimmers bring prestige and media attention to their events and offer all kinds of financial incentives to world-class swimmers that the FINA World Cup races do not.
Swimmers know that the opportunities to compete in world-class races vs. their top competitors actually outnumber the number of weekends that they want to race. And the top race directors, from Bob Placak in the RCP Tiburon Mile and Yutaka Shinozaki of the Japan International Open Water Swimming Association to Frank Flower in the Cayman Islands, Pedro Rego Montiero of Brazi’s King and Queen of the Sea and Wayne Riddin of the South Africa’s Midmar Mile, know how to get swimmers to their races.
So, although USA Swimming cut its funding for coaches to travel with the national team members, the opportunities abound for top swimmers to race against world-class competition, represent their country in professionally run events, and win even greater prize money than what is currently offered in FINA races. Every month, there are an increasingly number of opportunities for not only American professional marathon swimmers, but all their rivals around the world who they may face at the 2016 Rio Olympics and beyond.
Copyright © 2012 by World Open Water Swimming Association