International Swimming Federation

: See the disambiguation page for other meanings of FINA.

Fédération Internationale de Natation

FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation), the International Swimming Federation, is the International Federation (IF) recognized by the International Olympic Committe (IOC) with administering international competition in the aquatic sports. It is one of several IFs which administers a given sport/discipline for the IOC and/or international community. It is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

FINA oversees competition currently in five main areas: swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo and open water swimming championships.
The current President of FINA is Mustapha Larfaoui, of Algeria.

List of presidents

FINA Presidents
Name	Country! Term
G.W. Hearn	Great Britain	1908–1924
Erik Bergvall	Sweden	1924–1928
E.G. Drigny	France	1928–1932
W. Binner	Great Britain	1932–1936
H.E. Fern	Great Britain	1936–1948 (*)
Rene de Raeve	Belgium	1948–1952
M.L. Negri	Argentina	1952–1956
Jan de Vries	Netherlands	1956–1960
R.M. Ritter	USA	1960–1964
W. Berge Phillips	Australia	1964–1968
Javier Ostos	Mexico	1968–1972
Dr. Harold Henning	USA	1972–1976
Javier Ostos (2)	Mexico	1976–1980
Ante Lambasa	Yugoslavia	1980–1984
Robert Helmick	USA	1984–1988
Mustapha Larfaoui	Algeria	1988–2009

Events

FINA currently organizes several events in all the disciplines it oversees.

The biggest FINA event is the now bi-annual World Championships, currently held every odd year. It features events in all 5 aquatic disciplines, and will next be held in Melbourne, Australia, in March 2007. Prior to 2000, the event was held every 4 years, in the even year between Olympic (Summer) Games.

The World Swimming Championship (25m), (aka "Short Course Worlds"), is a swimming-only meet, swum in 25-meter long pool. It is held bi-annually, in even-numbered years, and was most recently held in Shanghai, China, in April 2006.Other championship events sponsored by FINA include:
* Youth World Swimming Championships (bi-annual, to be first held in August 2006)
* Junior Diving World Championships
* Open Water World Championships
* Masters World Championships (bi-annual, with the next event in August 2006 in Stanford, California)

Other than championships events, FINA also sponsors several annual series of events, typically one in each disciple. These include:
* the swimming World Cup (currently on hiatus for 2006-07)
* the diving Grand Prix (2006 features 8 meets and a Super Final, from February-September)
* the water polo World League
* the Marathon World Cup (2006's Cup features 19 races around the globe, from February through October, with races 10-kilometers and over)

See also

* Ligue Européenne de Natation (the European Swimming Federation).
* USA Swimming (USA's swimming federation).

External links

*Official FINA web page
*FINA Coverage powered by Community-online.com
*IOC's page on IFs