FINA World Cup Series Begins Anew This Weekend

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, October 7. TOP swimmers from around the world will make waves during the seven-stage FINA World Cup series starting this weekend in Belo Horizonte. LIVE World Cup coverage of finals will be available for FREE via streaming at the FINA web site.

The short course meter series attracts some of the biggest names in the sport all vying for a prize money pot of more than $1.1 million U.S.

This weekend, Beijing champions Oussama Mellouli of Tunisia (gold 1500m free medalist), and Cesar Cielo of Brazil (men's 50m free gold medalist) will be on hand, as well as Sweden's Therese Alshammar (women's 2007 World Cup winner) and Stefan Nystrand, Americans Randall Bal (men's 2007 World Cup winner) and Tara Kirk. Australia's Christian Sprenger and Sophie Edington, Evgeny Korotyshkin (Russia) and Mandy Loots (South Africa) will also be among the top flight swimmers competing.

Host cities for 2008 are the same as in 2007, although the order of meets has been altered. After the Brazil stop from October 10-12, the circuit goes to Durban (RSA) from October 17-18, Sydney (AUS) from October 25-26, Singapore (SIN) from November 1-2, Moscow (RUS) from November 8-9, Stockholm (SWE) from November 11-12, and the concluding meet in Berlin (GER) from November 15-16, 2008. This is the second year the World Cup calendar has been compacted to fit seven meets into a period of just five weeks in October-November. The new format allows athletes to stay focused on performing well during the series.

The new scoring system of the World Cup is based on points given in accordance with the value of performances registered in the FINA Points Table (updated July 1, 2008).

The best performer of the meet receives 25 points, the second 20, and so on, with additional points awarded for a World Record and double points awarded in the last leg of the circuit.

Special thanks to FINA for contributing to this report.

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