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LONDON. — Three Olympic and world champion swimmers have filed an antitrust suit in California challenging governing body FINA’s control of organising competitions.
The legal challenge is the latest faced by Olympic bodies from athletes seeking greater prize money and more say in running their sport.
It was filed on Friday on behalf of Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu and the United States’ Tom Shields and Michael Andrew and follows Switzerland-based FINA shutting down an independent meet in Italy with threats to ban competitors.
The planned event in Turin this month involved organisers of a proposed International Swimming League (ISL), which aims to operate outside FINA’s control and pay higher prize money.
“ISL takes swimmers seriously, not like FINA,” Hosszu, a three-time gold medalist at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, said in a statement. “My passion has always been to push swimming in the direction where swimmers are partners of the governing body, not just Muppets.”
Lawyers in San Francisco for the swimmers said they “believe a professional league that will compensate its best athletes and better reward them for a lifetime’s worth of hard training and sacrifice is long overdue”.
ISL organisers filed a separate and simultaneous suit against FINA for anticompetitive conduct, the lawyers said.
Both suits are pending in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. They were filed as FINA leaders and national swim teams gather in Hangzhou, China, for a convention ahead of the shorter, 25-metre pool world championships, which open tomorrow. — The Tribune
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