Over the next few weeks, bids to replace Dubai as the host of the 2013 World Championships will slowly leak out from various national federations, after a FINA briefing last week. Interested nations will make their final presentations at the upcoming 1st Annual FINA World Aquatics Convention in Uruguay at the end of September.
South Korea was the first nation to announce their bid for the event, which FINA asked them to make according to the Korean Swimming Federation (KSF) President Lee Ki-heung.
Dubai withdrew from hosting the 2013 World Championships in May, stating that it would prefer to focus it’s swimming resources on building a program from the ground up, rather than jumping straight to the World’s second biggest swimming event. Dubai will still host this year’s short course version of the meet, which, while still a significant meet, is not nearly on the scale as the long course meets that take place in odd-numbered years. The only other bidder for this year’s meet, Istanbul, Turkey, will host the 2012 Short Course World Championships.
Several media outlets, including xinhuanet.com, are reporting that the KSF has said that Sydney, Australia, hosts of the 2000 Olympic Games, will also make a bid. No official announcement of a bid has come from Swim Australia, however, so stay tuned.
Choosing South Korea as the host would be a bit of a surprising move by FINA, as the 2011 World Championships will also be hosted in East Asia, specifically Shanghai, China. Although FINA definitely has interest in expanding the sport in the ever-growing Eastern Asian market, it would still be an unusual move to put 2 consecutive World Championships so geographically close together. In fact, if you include the short course championships, that would be 4 consecutive World Championship meets held on the Asian continent, which would be a huge boon to the Asian Amateur Aquatics Federation, but might anger some of the more well established federations.