The Morning Swim Show, March 2, 2012: Nikki Dryden Issues A Call to Athletes to Fight Corruption in FINA

PHOENIX, Arizona, March 2. NIKKI Dryden, a Canadian Olympian and writer for SwimNews magazine, joins today's edition of The Morning Swim Show to talk about a recent article in which she calls for athletes to take a stand against corruption in FINA.

Dryden says the world aquatic governing body does not do enough to financially reward its athletes, despite the money awarded at World Cup and World Championship events. She specifically calls for something akin to a 'swimmer's union,' which would give a bigger voice to the athletes that help finance FINA's coffers. You can read Dryden's article by clicking here. Be sure to visit SwimmingWorld.TV for more video interviews.

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(Note: This is an automated service where some typos and grammatical errors may occur.)

Peter Busch: This is The Morning Swim Show for Friday, March 2nd 2012. I'm your host Peter Busch. In the FINIS monitor today we'll talk to Nikko Dryden. She writes for Swim News Magazine, which is based out of Canada and she recently wrote a very interesting article calling for swimmers and other aquatic sports athletes around the world to stand up and challenge the way FINA does business. Here to elaborate – Nikki Dryden in the FINIS monitor from New York City. Hi, Nikki, thanks for coming on the show. How are you?

Nikki Dryden: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Peter Busch: All right. So in this article you essentially compared FINA leaders to autocrats around the world that we saw toppled in the Arab Spring and other uprisings from a political standpoint. That's a very interesting comparison.

Nikki Dryden: Yes, I think global sports movements and it starts at the International Olympic Committee and it goes down to all the individual sports federations but there really is no democracy happening in any global sports governance and so the purpose of that comparison was to show people that for a long time sports — and swimming in particular as that's the focus of my life – is that they've gone under the radar and they in a sense are undemocratic, non-transparent governing bodies that we in the democratized world cannot believe is actually happening if you knew it was happening and I think the purpose of the article was so that swimmers would understand what's really happening because I think if they knew they wouldn't let it continue.

Peter Busch: Okay, there's a few different points that you made – examples to make your point but the one I want to start with is – and it all comes down to money usually – these governing bodies take a lot of money, the controversy comes in how they dole out the money or how much they keep for themselves. Explain a little bit about how FINA works.

Nikki Dryden: FINA is a very small organization. They have 22 members on the bureau itself which are these elite members from small countries like Nigeria and Morocco, Tibet, Thailand, and Kuwait and these bureau members really have control over the whole thing. There is a process and there are lots of commissions and lots of other people that are in positions of power within the whole FINA family but generally it's the bureau that has a lot of power – they're very small — and then there's the office itself. And yet between these two varied groups, small groups of people, we're talking maybe 100 people, the amount of money that they spend on themselves whether it's through the international travel, going to competitions around the world, some of the office staff and some of the budgets that I was able to see for particular things that FINA runs at their offices – you compare that and you'd have to look at the article for the figures but when you compare that to the amount of money they're spending on swimmers it's incredibly low. And when I say spending on swimmers I'm talking about the four aquatic disciplines. Unfortunately the figures that I have don't divide it up amongst swimming, water polo, synchronized swimming, and diving so we'll have to assume that somehow this is done equally across all sports which it's probably not. And basically we're talking about doping control, we're talking about prize money, we're talking about developing swimming in the developing world and that figure doesn't even come close to what they're spending on themselves and that's where I see a huge problem.

Peter Busch: You propose less money for their cushy offices and flying first class and staying in nice hotels, more money for the people who are actually competing and for developing the sport to make it a better sport.

Nikki Dryden: Yes, I would love for Michael Phelps, Natalie Coughlin, Libby Lenton, the top athletes of the world, I would love for them to stand up “Hey, what's going on here? Where is the money that I'm generating for FINA?” and it really is them generating the money, they're the ones that bring in ticket sales, they're the ones that bring in sponsor money, they're the ones that get… TV revenue from the Olympics. All of that money that's generated off swimmers is not going back to swimmers. And I'm not saying it all has to go into prize money, I think that what we need is an open discussion about who makes swimming better because right now FINA's version of better swimming is making more money for themselves, selling more tickets at world championships, having more swimmers compete but are they really competing at a level that's competitive? I would love to see swimmers from all countries around the world who are competitive and can race in the final, not just go and be a participant at the world championships so I would love to see an equitable swimming world where you have girls and boys from developing countries who are able to compete, coaches that are women and men being able to come to the championships, administrators who are women and men being able to participate in swimming sports governance. Those are the things I'd love to see money be spent on – to develop swimming around the world prize money for the top athletes who are the real generators of revenue – but instead what we're seeing is money being spent on administration and things that the bureau does and to be honest I don't know what they do other than fly around the world and stay in five-star hotels.

Peter Busch: Okay. So in America we're used to seeing the sports unions, like the NFL recently had a lockout with the owners because they disagreed on how much of the take they were getting. Could swimmers figure out a way to do something so similar?

Nikki Dryden: I think so. My personal opinion is we need to scrap FINA altogether. I would love to see … top swimmers break away from FINA. In my opinion FINA's had three strikes and they should be out. They were complicit in the Chinese doping scandal in the 1990s and did nothing to stop it. In the 00's they were part and parcel responsible for the swimsuit fiasco and the most tragic thing of all is the death of Fran Crippen which I feel FINA is complicit in as well. For me I'm done with them as an organizing body and I don't see why USA Swimming and Australian Swimming do not realize the power they have to create their own swimming federation and I think the athletes … it can be a great balance between current swimmers who understand what are the issues facing swimmers today along with retired swimmers who maybe have more resources in order to help effectuate change. And so I think a swimmers' union is definitely a first step to all of these or even a step that could go along with creating a new swimming federation. And so there are athletes' unions in Europe which swimmers are a part of that really understand what are the needs of an athlete. A lot of swimmers — we're young when we swim and we're young when we swim back, especially girls, and so the idea that there's life after swimming how do we set that up, what does it look like, do we have health insurance, do we have mental health care for when we retire, do we have finances to help us retire, what are we supposed to be doing while we're swimming, can we have part time jobs – I mean there are so many issues around the life of an athlete that a swimmers' union could really help support in terms of what it means to be a swimmer both in your current career and when you retire and I think that until the swimmers realize the power of their own voice to speak out against corruption and the way our swimming federation handles things we won't see real change.

Peter Busch: Nikki – first of all just to our viewers we know that the connection's breaking up a little bit – but Nikki we want to tell you we really appreciate you writing the article and for this call for awareness – I think it's an important step in where the sport goes from here and thank you very much for joining us.

Nikki Dryden: Thank you very much.Peter Busch: Again, I apologize for the rough connection there towards the end but thank you very much to Nikki Dryden for joining us. Very, very interesting read – we encourage you to take a look. That is it for today's show, I'm Peter Busch reminding you to keep your head down at the finish.

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