Dubai: Not all pools FINA compliant

The location of this year’s World Short Course Swimming Championships has been thrown into doubt after FINA gave Dubai a deadline of only a few weeks to pay the fee for hosting the event.

The municipality has recently suffered a well publicised financial crisis, including a bail out from local neighbours Abu Dhabi, and some are concerned this may be linked to the late payment for December’s event.

However, FINA can take solace from the fact that, despite their troubles, Dubai still recently found the money to pay for over 10,000 fireworks to celebrate the grand opening of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.

This is not the first time that the hosts of a major swimming championships have run into financial difficulty. As recently as 2005 Montreal was stripped of the right to host the World Long Course Championships, only for the decision to be reversed less than a month later.

In a prepared statement a FINA spokesperson added ‘If sweeping national stereotypes have taught us anything it’s that people in Dubai love to spend piles of cash. Paying for a international swimming championships is a lot less crazy than paying for an indoor ski slope in the middle of a desert. As such we expect the money to arrive in our account very soon.’

Suits: You

The recent FINA Bureau meeting in Bangkok did not have a happy finish for some older swimmers as it was announced that full-body swimsuits would be banned for masters from 1st January 2010.

Previously there had been some confusion over whether newly introduced rules on swimming attire governed masters events, with some national governing bodies making their own rulings on the subject. However, the FINA press release appears to have now put the matter beyond doubt.

The issue of suits is a controversial one at all levels of the sport, with some masters swimmers likely to be disappointed that they will no longer be able to benefit from the widely reported performance-enhancing qualities of state of the art suits. The ability of full-body suits to ‘hold things in’ will also be lost.

‘I am really disappointed,’ one masters swimmer told The Wobbly Block. ‘Without my suit I’m going to have to train really hard to set a new personal best. It’s a bit of a disaster.’