Taking part in the Universiade, Finswimming entered a new era
The Universiade is an international university championship that has taken place every couple of years since 1959. As for the Olympic Games, the Universiade is composed of a summer edition and a winter edition. Academic athletes can represent their country in 12 official sports in summer and 8 ones in winter. The country organizing the event can decide to integrate additional sports.
During the last summer Universiade that took place in Kazan (RUS) in July, Finswimming has been represented for the very first time. A team of eight international finswimmers from different countries participated to a 50m surface: Loukas Karetzopoulos and William Baldwin from Greece, Pavel Kabanov and Alexey Kazantsev from Russia, Alexander Drozdov ans Nikolai Tover from Estonia, Giona Cristofari and Stefano Figini from Italy. They offered a great show to the public showing the power, the velocity and the beauty of Finswimming. Three of them swam under 16’’ (Karetzopoulos, 15’’53, Kabanov, 15’’65 and Kazantsev, 15’’79) and four under 17’’ (Drozdov, 16’’25, Baldwin, 16’’26, Cristofari, 16’’50 and Figini, 16’’67). Nikolai Tover closed the results in 17’’07.
With 20 TV channels were presents during the Universiade to broadcast the competitions and a 3’500 seats-capacity swimming pool, taking part in the Universiade was a great opportunity for Finswimming to communicate on our sport.
Next rendez-vous for Finswimming in few days with the World Games 2013 in Cali (COL).
