Cornel Marculescu Continuing To Plead For Michael Phelps To Attend World Championships

Photo Courtesy: Taylor Brien

Though there is absolutely no way that Michael Phelps will compete at the FINA world championships in Kazan, Russia, this August, that hasn’t stopped FINA Executive Director Cornel Marculescu from pushing for the Greatest Of All Time to change his mind.

In commentary published by The Associated Press’ Paul Newberry, Marculescu said he’s more than willing to put the FINA Rulebook aside in order to put Phelps in the meet. USA Swimming has not made any indication that Phelps could get onto the roster, which would require at least one person to drop an event or be removed from the team completely, depending on the events Phelps would swim.

“It’s important for us to have Phelps there in any way because he’s our pope,” Marculescu said. “We told them (USA Swimming) it’s very important to have Michael Phelps. But they have their own rules.”

As the head of the global aquatic sports federation, Marculescu is more than capable of doing whatever he wants if Phelps were to attend the meet. Even Phelps understands that there shouldn’t be any favoritism thrown his way.

“I’m pretty (sure) Cornel would let me swim for any country I wanted to,” Phelps told Newberry. “But I’m going to respect the decision that was made.”

Since withdrawing from the world team in October in the wake of his DUI arrest, Phelps and his camp have settled on the USA Swimming national championships in San Antonio as his long course championship meet. The nationals will take place at the same time as worlds, giving Phelps the opportunity to have virtual races with the best in the world.

Expect Phelps’ disappointment over losing out on what would have likely been his seventh and final world championships to show at nationals with some sizzling performances.

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Raimo Ketola

8 years ago

Why does not FINA have the same wild card system as for example IAAF has, meaning that defending world champions have a free entry to defend their titles? That is a very good system because spectators want to see the best of the world, not just two from a country. This two per country rule is not very clever from a spectator’s point of view.

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Jeff Commings

8 years ago

Reply to Raimo Ketola

Raimo, the two-per-country rule came about in the 1980s as a response to countries taking the top three spots in many events at the Olympics and world championships. East Germany and the USA were the two countries that did this the most, which irked many countries. As for the “wild card” system, that could work in swimming but sometimes those previous world champions are not the best in their country when the next meet rolls around. As for Phelps, this wouldn’t apply to him anyway since he didn’t swim at the 2013 world championships.