{"id":412447,"date":"2020-01-25T01:30:24","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T08:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=412447"},"modified":"2020-01-25T01:30:24","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T08:30:24","slug":"2020s-vision-the-athlete-voice-alliance-not-union-aims-to-take-isl-model-to-multi-sports-games-of-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/2020s-vision-the-athlete-voice-alliance-not-union-aims-to-take-isl-model-to-multi-sports-games-of-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"2020s Vision – The Athlete Voice: ‘Alliance’ Not ‘Union’ Aims To Take ISL Model To Multi-Sports ‘Games Of Magic’"},"content":{"rendered":"

2020s Vision – Matt Biondi & The International Swimmers’ Alliance, Part 2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Part 1: Matt Biondi\u2019s Mission To Enrich & Educate Swimmers<\/a><\/p>\n

“It’s not a union”, says Matt Biondi.<\/p>\n

Change. Demands. Speaking out. Insisting sports bosses engage, listen, act on the word of the athlete. Moving in numbers. Acting as one. Sounds like a union. But it isn’t, says the director of the International Swimmers’ Alliance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“It’s not a union in the sense they\u2019re [the swimmers] not paying dues to be a part of it. We\u2019re no so much negotiating with the current employers, which would be the IOC, as seeking to open up additional economic opportunities, just like the ISL.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The International Swimming League (ISL) <\/strong><\/a>launched in October last year. The format delivered Pro-team competition in which swimmers from different nations joined forces on eight teams, four of which made it to a Final Match in Las Vegas last month, Energy Standard the first season champion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Alliance is involved in talks to take that format and build a series of mini-Olympics, called the Games to Magic.<\/strong> If the event gets off the ground,\u00a0says Biondi, it “will incorporate Track and Field, Swimming, including Open Water, and BMX biking”.<\/p>\n

He points to the multi-sport Glasgow 2018 European Championship that incorporated swimmers, runners, bikers and others. The event did not quite deliver what was intended: multiple sports all holding their separate continental championship in the same city, benefiting from \u00a0economies of scale and delivering a festival-of-sport feel, complete with street food and other entertainment that attracts families and boosts the \u00a0audience. Sport as a great day out for all.<\/p>\n

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Freya Anderson gets her head round a range that extends from 50m to 400m in Glasgow – Photo Courtesy: Patrick B. Kraemer<\/p><\/div>\n

The track and field events ended up being in Berlin, not Glasgow, but the concept of allowing sports to run their own affairs while coming together under one umbrella for a two-week period has earned plaudits, from hosts and the sports involved as well as the audience, hotels and related business.<\/p>\n

The model also speak to some aspects of sustainability we will raise later in this 2020sVision Series. Multi-sports events are a little like supermarkets in terms of economies of scale and the attention the less popular items on the shelf may attract if they sit alongside the chocolate, chips, chlorella trend and beer, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Biondi talks of athletes from four sports and many countries joining pro-teams that compete specifically at the Games to Magic<\/strong> across sports, no national flags, in much the same way ISL teams are formed of swimmers of different nations and different strengths, stroke and distance.<\/p>\n

What would the Games of Magic look like? Biondi explains what sport may start to look like in the not-too-distant future, a place perhaps of a little Olympics each year not just the one big one every four years:<\/p>\n

“There would be a single-host city, rotated between four fixed cities every four years, with four sports with teams across all those sports, but instead of 50,000 athletes like the Olympics it would be 1,000 athletes. It would be family friendly, you would be able to go see several events conveniently in the same day: these would be the top athletes in their event.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Questions on the viability of such an event include who organises what. The current thinking is that each sport must bring its offer to the party. As Biondi puts it recalling a comment made by someone else in discussions about “Magic”: “If Biondi can\u2019t get the swimmers together, then he won\u2019t be able to do the track and field athletes.”<\/p>\n

Biondi envisages athletes receiving 50% of net revenue in prize money, appearance fees as well as contributions towards travel and accommodation. Host cities would receive 30% of revenues, while management would get 20%.<\/p>\n

The timing of the event on a cluttered calendar is among matters yet to be decided.<\/p>\n

Calendar Chaos And Revolution<\/h3>\n

I raise the issue of ISL’s proposed expansion from 7 events over 11 weeks to 27 events stretched out from September to April each northern winter. That would certainly force discussion about calendar chaos, another of our 2020sVision themes to come, would it not? Biondi notes a key detail of Grigorishin’s League vision when he says:<\/p>\n

“Swimmers are not going to go to all this stuff all of the time. And they don\u2019t have to.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The regional derby, answering the call of team need at a crunch match and being ready for the showdown matches is where it will count for the likes of Caeleb Dressel, Adam Peaty <\/strong>and even Katinka Hosszu<\/strong>, though it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Hungarian who has made an art and business of multi-racing may wish to make a 27-event point beyond Tokyo 2020, her fifth Games in a journey that began at 15 with a 31st-place finish in 2:04.22 over 200m freestyle at Athens 2004.<\/p>\n

Much water under the bridge, Hosszu, the first race prize-money millionaire in swimming and Hungary’s “most valuable athlete” for the past five years, has not only taken on her rivals in the water. In the past Olympic cycle, she forced Hungary’s FINA Bureau member Tamas Gyarfas<\/strong> out of the top seat at the domestic swim federation after a public showdown over the state of governance.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2018, she joined Tom Shields<\/strong> and Michael Andrew<\/strong> in a legal challenge to FINA<\/a> aimed at securing a legal decision in the United States that would reflect what is already written into European Union competition law: no organisation can dictate where athletes compete in order to earn a living nor can they prevent them from earning a living by suspending them from FINA competition.<\/p>\n

Catch 22. The legal case in the United States is proceeding after a December 16, 2019, ruling at the U.S. District Court Northern District of California, in which Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley<\/strong> denied FINA’s motions to dismiss the case and also denied the defendant\u2019s administrative motions to seal.<\/p>\n

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Dive into Peace, says the pool poster but swimming is at war over the fight for clean sport – Photo courtesy – Craig Lord<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, FINA has shifted its position, launched the Champions’ Series and allowed the ISL to go ahead, while maintaining that it would not allow any World records set at certain events on dates that clashed with the World Cup to stand. That position is also one likely to fall in the face of legal challenge, given that many competitions take place around the world on the same dates as FINA events, with no impediment to any global records standing providing FINA’s competition rules have been observed.<\/p>\n

There are obvious clash point ahead – doping among the obvious ones – and athletes, too, have a learning curve ahead as they start to make their voice heard.<\/p>\n

When Biondi says that dates for the ISL would not clash with the Olympics and may need adjusting only once every four years to account for the Games, his thought bypasses a big part of the swimming world.<\/p>\n