LAUSANNE, Switzerland, October 8. TODAY, FINA officially announced the 2007 FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup series in a press release. The series will feature a compact schedule that incorporates seven meets in just more than a month's time. Additionally, the short course series will take place on five continents.
The meet schedule is as follows:
• October 19-20 in Durban (RSA)
• October 27-28 in Singapore (SIN)
• November 2-3 in Sydney (AUS)
• November 9-10 in Moscow (RUS)
• November 13-14 in Stockholm (SWE)
• November 17-18 in Berlin (GER)
• November 23-25 in Belo Horizonte (BRA).
With the addition of a new title sponsor, money will also be available in the prize pool.
"A total of US$360,000 will be distributed to the winners, while an additional maximum of US$50,000 is reserved for world record breakers," FINA said in the release. "The overall winners receive US$100,000, while those placing second and third place overall receive US$50,000 and US$30,000 respectively. But sums ranging from US$500 to US$1,500 are also distributed to the winners of each of the 34 races at all seven meets, which gives an additional amount of US$714,000 (US$102,000 per meet)."
For this year's competitions, as with every other world cup series since the year 2000, the scoring system used to rank swimmers at each event of the series is based on the FINA Points Table. Swimmers are ranked just once for each meet regardless of the number of races they swim, and the ranking they are given is always based on their best swim.
FINA also announced that each organizer of a world cup event will receive an additional $15,000 a year to help reduce their costs, and hopefully increase prize money in later editions.