South African Chad le Clos and Hungarian Katinka Hosszu were named the Male and Female Athletes of the Year at a gala hosted by FINA on Monday evening in Doha, Qatar.
In a year that was absent a true long course worlds-best meet, FINA went with the winners of the top male and female at the World Cup Series, respectively, over a swimmer like Katie Ledecky, who broke multiple World Records in long course.
Hosszu broke 5 World Records of her own to give her a stake to this award: all of them came in short course meters. She also won 6 medals at the 2014 European Aquatics Championships.
See the full list of award winners from across FINA’s disciplines below.
SWIMMING MEN
Chad Le Clos (RSA)
– Winner of the 2014 FINA/MASTBANK Swimming World Cup (collecting 27 gold medals in the series)
– 2x Commonwealth Games champion (100m fly, 200m fly)
– 2x Commonwealth Games bronze medallist (50m fly, 200m IM)
SWIMMING WOMEN
Katinka Hosszu (HUN)
– Winner of the 2014 FINA/MASTBANK Swimming World Cup (collecting 68 medals in the series)
– 5 WR in 25m-pool: 2x 100m IM, 2x 200m IM, 1x 400m IM
– 6 medals at the European Championships
DIVING MEN
Cao Yuan (CHN)
– Winner of the FINA World Cup (3m synchro, 10m synchro)
– World Cup silver medallist (3m springboard)
– Winner of overall FINA World Series (3m synchro, 10m synchro)
– 2x Asian Games gold medallist
DIVING WOMEN
Liu Huixia (CHN)
– Winner of the FINA World Cup (10m synchro)
– World Cup silver medallist (10m platform)
– Winner of overall FINA World Series (10m and 10m synchro)
– 1x Asian Games gold medallist
HIGH DIVING MEN
Orlando Duque (COL)
– Winner of the FINA World Cup
– 4th Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series (2x medallist)
HIGH DIVING WOMEN
Rachelle Simpson (USA)
– Winner of the FINA World Cup
– Winner of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series (3x gold medallist)
SYNCHRONISED SWIMMING
Huang Xuechen (CHN)
– Winner of the FINA World Cup (duet, team and free combination)
– 3x Asian Games gold medallist
OPEN WATER SWIMMING MEN
Allan do Carmo (BRA)
– Winner of overall 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup (winner of two races in the series)
OPEN WATER SWIMMING WOMEN
Ana Marcela Cunha (BRA)
– Winner of overall 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup (winner of five races in the series; medallist in all eight races)
WATER POLO MEN
Filip Filipovic (SRB)
– World League winner
– European champion
– Champions League silver medallist
WATER POLO WOMEN
Maggie Steffens (USA)
– World League winner (MVP of Super Final)
– Winner of World Cup
How do you give out Swimmer of the year awards before the World Championships, the only open World meet of the year? What if Katinka and Chad get their butts kicked in Doha, in the short course pool that they are getting rewarded for performing in? Still World Swimmers of the Year?
Hit the nail on the head.
Boss, your comment is a valid one, but unfortunately the forward looking component was way off target. Chad Le Clos is swimmer of the year for a very good reason. He blew them away at the W SC Championships, and added the 200 free to his repertoire for good measure. I think that Hagino is a huge talent and that he will be a big star in Rio. I have been saying this for over a year, whilst everybody else on this site has been talking up Phelps and Lochte. At last some sense has been knocked into the crowd. Le Clos and Hagino/Seto are the future. Phelps and Lochte are swimming greats at the end of their careers. p.s… Read more »
Sure the 3 WRs are great, but if you think about it she got in great shape and with swimming it can often mean that you swim WR in e.g 100, than chances are you can do it in 200.
Regarding Katinka she was in superior shape the whole year, won every World Cup rounds collecting 68 medals – out of those 51 gold – and this is just the WK. She also became the all time winner in the WK series and let’s not forget she had set 5 World record.
In addition, she also won 6 medals at the European Championship 3 of them was gold. And this was a LC meet. I believe having 6 medals… Read more »
Don’t be such a butt-hurt….
First of all, having 3 LC WR does not mean someone is better than the other. You can define “the best” not just by how many WR they have, but for example how many medal did they collect throughout the year…Just because you expected Katie to won in 2 consecutive year it doesn’t mean that she got robbed.
Sure the 3 WRs are great, but if you think about it she got in great shape and with swimming it can often mean that you swim WR in e.g 100, than chances are you can do it in 200.
Regarding Katinka she was in superior shape the whole year, won every World Cup rounds collecting… Read more »
Short course = no one cares. Heck, if short course is so important Michael Phelps would have dedicated his time in training for this crap. You can shove all those world records and world medals all you want, but at the end of the day, the Long course is more important!
Who are you to say that no one cares about short course and to call it “this crap”? If YOU don’t doesn’t mean NO ONE does. You disrespect and offend all those great swimmers, the world’s best like Lochte, Manaudau, Hagino, Hosszu, Bronte, Clary among them who will be swimming in Doha this week. No need to be this rude and disrespectful towards others to express your opinion.
Disrespect? LOL. If the Short course is so important EVERY BEST SWIMMER in the World would have been there competing and training for this crap. But the truth is, the OLYMPICS is the biggest event in swimming and it uses the long course. That’s not a lie honey, it is the truth.
Nobody is attacking Katinka, Attila. We are merely pointing out that this decision is a FINA vanity project in an attempt to push their prized SC ‘show’. We haven’t even seen the years only World event, yet FINA have awarded ‘World Swimmer of the year’? The WC circuit is a great way to promote swimming to a wider audience, to let swimmers bump up their bank accounts and work on skills through the long, hard winter. What it is definitely not is a meaningful event, so why are FINA picking ‘Swimmer of the year’ seemingly based on an athlete dominating a series filled with ‘good’ swimmers but very few truly world class title contenders? Katinka had a great year and… Read more »
Yawn. Who cares about the Short course? No one. But I don’t think Ledecky really cares. The lack of respect for this girl, heck even in the US is disappointing. I think FINA just give her another motivation next year and Rio! LOL. So, thank you FINA.
maybe, just maybe, if katinka and chad spent more time training instead of going to all the world cups, they both might have a long course record…they don’t have one REAL WR between the two of them!
fina is just recognizing those swimmers that are doing ‘their events’ and ignoring the real stage! ledecky set 5 or 6 lc world records in ONE summer!!! of course, most of the fina members are pretty ignorant about the sport.
Not in Berlin, with that terrible bad quality 2m deep swimming pool. Why wasn’t anybody amaized that there were almost no world recods swum at the WC in Berlin in individual events (except for Peaty) ???
Really? What a ridiculous excuse.
The Brits had their best European’s ever and swam very fast, many of them faster than or as fast as they did at Commonwealths. We had taken part in a home championships three weeks earlier, our peak meet of the year, the one which really mattered to us. If we could turn up and swim as fast as we did, there was nothing wrong with the pool.
Mind over matter.
Maybe I missed something and the Brittish (including Dee) did swim at least 10 individual world records. Of course, the pool and the swimming suits do not matter at all for the swimming performance, that the suits are very tight and reach to the knees is merely a stupid fashion trend, and that the pools are usually 3m deep and containing so many lanes is an odd fact. 😉
Ledecky is by far and away the best swimmer this year. she is beating legit records, not SC where most of the top swimmers dont even participate
Swimming World had it right: Ledecky and Hagino were their choice.
So silly that FINA would put so much weight on short course swimming.
They only want to promote their world cup with that choice.
They have their 2 world cup stars (the rare world big names who take the world cup seriously) and they want to thank them with these trophies.
But sorry, it shouldn’t be a thankful choice.
Real swimming is in long course and one girl has done amazing things in long course this year.
How they can’t give the award to Miss Ledecky with such legendary world records? 😯
And even to Mr Hagino on the men’s side.
Pathetic!
But from FINA, I’m not surprised anymore.