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Newly elected FINA President Husain Al Musallam
said he was committed to reforming the federation after this
month replacing Julio Maglione, who had been in charge for 12
years and whose administration had opposed the creation of the
ISL.
The ISL was founded in 2017 and FINA at the time had urged
national federations to refuse to cooperate with it, threatening
to ban swimmers who took part in independently organised events.
But after pressure from top swimmers, FINA cleared athletes to
participate in non-FINA sanctioned competitions, including the
inaugural ISL season in 2019.
"For me as president of FINA, my door is open for ISL or any
other commercial operation," Husain Al Musallam said in a
conference call. "We will work with ISL if ISL would like to
work with FINA."
"If any entity would like to play a positive role to help the
movement I will be the first one to congratulate them and shake
their hand," he said.
FINA's revenues took a big hit in the past year and some budgets
had been cut, he said, without providing financial details.
The club-based ISL series features many of the world's top
swimmers and held its second season finals behind closed doors
in Budapest last November, with a number of short-course world
records broken.
It has since announced season three would start in the Italian
city of Naples in August.
Swimming is a top Olympic sport and will have the most medal
events at the Tokyo Olympics next month with 49, one more than
athletics, another major Olympic sport.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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