BUDAPEST — As Yogi Berra once famously said, it ain’t over til it’s over, and while the swimming part of these 19th FINA championships is just now half over, and for a great chunk of the world these championships perhaps have an are-they-really-happening vibe, up close there are threads that clearly deserve pulling:
— Caeleb Dressel, the top American guy, went home abruptly. USA Swimming wouldn’t say what’s wrong, citing medical privacy laws.
Let’s deconstruct.
Dressel here in Budapest // Getty Images
Everyone at an NFL game knows almost immediately what’s wrong, and why, when someone gets hurt or falls ill. Yet swimming’s biggest star bugs out of town? What if Tom Brady blew out of town at halftime of the Super Bowl?
OK, but this is not the NFL and Dressel is not Brady. The NFL financials dwarf USA Swimming, which is maybe a $35 million per year operation. Moreover, Olympic swimming —while a professional business — is not subject to a collective bargaining agreement in which athlete injury reports are mandatory and, for that matter, athletes are required at certain times to speak to journalists. Further, a point frequently lost on critics of the system of Olympic sport: even the biggest stars, and Dressel is the shining light among the guys on the USA Swimming national team, are independent contractors, not employees.
So, to reduce the situation to its HR fundamentals, what we have is an independent contractor with an ailment. Since there’s no disclosure of any sort from USA Swimming, it stands to reason that at issue is a mental health concern. It also stands to reason that USA Swimming is going to stand with this key and, let’s be frank, most valued independent contractor because — well, that’s obvious.
Assuming this analysis proves right, the only other notion that might be offered is that in our broken and fragile world, which considerably needs more empathy, more humanity, more soul, Dressel might well do a lot of people a lot of good as soon as he’s ready to speak.
Moving along:
—The Russians aren’t here. Of their own accord. Neither are some number of top Australians. Same, but for very different reasons. The Americans, even without Dressel racking up wins, are running away with the medal count. No one should make too much of it.
— Other winners in Budapest:
FINA itself, leading the way in the entire Olympic movement on the transgender issue. For all its complexities, the matter is simple. It’s inclusion — no one, repeat, no one is being banned, just the opposite — and, at the elite level, fairness. The rest is noise.
The federation president, Kuwait’s Husain Al Musallam, elected president a year ago on a platform of change. He has delivered, with a new integrity unit and more. Thomas Bach, the IOC president, came to Budapest, and in a signal that should not be missed, delivered a 30-minute speech Sunday at the FINA Congress.
The federation’s executive director, Brent Nowicki. He directed the reform process. Not easy.
The federation. To prove that a dinosaur can change its spots, or some sort of metaphor: per a report delivered Sunday at that congress, in 2021 FINA scored a No. 1 ranking among the federations on Facebook; on YouTube, recorded 24 million video views and 50,000 new subscribers; and, at the Tokyo Games, landed among the top five federation accounts in engagement and growth in followers. In addition, more than one million unique users have accessed the new FINA website, launched in February 2021. And, just prior to these championships, FINA, finally, launched a TikTok account.
The sport, and here we mean swimming (no disrespect to water polo friends and others). Already, two world records. And a new generation of stars, among them Canada’s Summer McIntosh, winner Wednesday of the women’s 200 butterfly, a world junior record 2:05.20; Léon Marchand of France (coached by Bob Bowman, of Michael Phelps renown), winner Wednesday of the 200 individual medley, and David Popovici of Romania, winner Wednesday of the 100 free, the men’s heavyweight fight, in 47.58 seconds.
Dressel, of course, is (among other wins) last year’s Tokyo 100 free champion.
Earlier in the meet, Marchand won the 400 IM, Popovici the 200 free. Popovici is the first to win the 100 and 200 free at worlds since the very first edition, 1973. Later Wednesday, after that win in the 200 fly, a world junior record, McIntosh went out on the first leg of the 4x2 free relay and set another world junior mark, 1:54.79.
Marchand is an A student (at Arizona State — no jokes, please, the school has gotten w-a-y better), speaks English fluently and is poised to be one of the big stars in Paris in two years. Especially if he breaks Phelps’ 400 IM record from 2008, 4:03.84 — which, with his time here, 4:04.28, is now suddenly within reach.
Popovici after winning gold // Getty Images
Now a riff on Popovici. The young man is handsome and built like Adonis. He is the first Romanian to win a gold medal at the swim worlds. He is only 17. Like Marchand, he also appears to be genuinely decent. After one race earlier this week, the story goes, he promised a reporter he would come back to chat; it got late; almost everything was shut down; suddenly, there he was. He said, I had to warm down and do drug testing. But I promised.
Big winner: Katie Ledecky. She has won three golds and, you’d logically think, would be up for a fourth later this week in the 800 free. The medals — two individual golds, the 400 and 1500, and one relay, the 4x2 free Wednesday evening. She swam the third leg. When she hit the water, the Americans were third. She went 1:53.67. It was the third-fastest split in history and the best of her career. Now the Americans were in first and stayed there, Bella Sims going 1:54.6 on the anchor leg. Ledecky has 21 career world championship medals, most by a female swimmer. Only Phelps (33) and Ryan Lochte (27) have more.
Finally, big, big winner:
Budapest. These 2022 championships were supposed to have been in Fukuoka, Japan. But because of Covid, no. Budapest stepped up and got it done in four months. Four months! The point man: Balazs Furjes, who over the past five or six years has become widely known in Olympic circles and has to be a, if not the, leading (read: deserving) candidate to become an IOC member — Pal Schmitt, Hungary’s member since 1983, reached his IOC age limit, 80, this year.
More on the city. In 2019, it staged the World Urban Games. Breakdancing, the gotta-see-it event at the 2024 Paris Games, the IOC intently focused on a transition to “urban” sports? You saw it in Budapest in 2019. As for the more tradition-minded: the 2023 track championships will be here. That stadium is taking shape now just south of the center city. The new Puskas Arena, where the congress was held, is a multipurpose arena fit for, hmm, gymnastics. Look around and pretty much all the pieces you might want for a Games are, you know, in or around Budapest or about to be. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what senior IOC leadership already knows: the government, up to its highest levels, is supportive and, under the IOC’s Agenda 2020+5 guidelines, a country like Hungary, while perhaps not the biggest in size, can now realistically plan if not push for a Summer Games. Perhaps as soon as 2036.
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(Disclosure: as noted before, I served on a reform subcommittee relating to FINA’s communication strategy. My input, delivered as part of a report issued last December: the prior approach, not constructive, needed wholesale change.)