World aquatics championships head to Singapore in 2025, replacing Russia

By OlympicTalkFeb 9, 2023, 6:03 AM EST

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Singapore will hold the world aquatics championships in 2025, replacing the originally awarded host of Kazan, Russia, and bringing the event to Southeast Asia for the first time.

It will mark an unprecedented fourth consecutive year to have a world aquatics championships after Budapest (2022), Fukuoka, Japan (2023) and Doha in February 2024, five months before the Paris Olympics.

The World Aquatics Championships were a biennial event before the COVID-19 pandemic altered the global sports calendar.

Aquatics worlds include swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming and the non-Olympic discipline of high diving. They are usually contested in June and July, though the Singapore dates are to be determined.

Kazan was originally named 2025 Worlds host in 2019, but the nation has been stripped of hosting international competitions since it invaded Ukraine. Budapest was also named 2027 Worlds host back in 2019.

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FINA renamed World Aquatics

Associated PressDec 12, 2022, 7:36 AM EST

World Aquatics

FINA, the federation which has run international swimming competitions for more than a century, is rebranding itself as World Aquatics ahead of the next Olympics in Paris in 2024 after a vote Monday.

That means leaving behind the French-language name of Fédération Internationale de Natation — International Swimming Federation. World Aquatics says the new brand is more inclusive of events such as diving, water polo and artistic swimming, all of which are overseen by the federation.

“More than 70% of the athletes that we have spoken with have said that they would like us to change FINA’s name. Many of them could not even tell us what the letters in FINA stand for,” World Aquatics president Husain Al-Musallam said.

The new name will be phased in gradually in 2023 before the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, in July.

World Aquatics continues a trend toward shorter, simpler English-language names among the federations running international sports.

In track and field, the International Association of Athletics Federations rebranded as World Athletics in 2019. The former Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Aviron is now known as World Rowing and the International Rugby Board became World Rugby.

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U.S. women’s water polo team wins world championship, extends unrivaled streak

By OlympicTalkJul 2, 2022, 3:09 PM EDT

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The U.S. women’s water polo team won its record-extending fourth consecutive world championship, completing yet another undefeated run through a major tournament.

The Americans, winners of the last three Olympic titles, beat host Hungary 9-7 in Saturday’s final in Budapest, nearly squandering an 8-4 lead in the fourth quarter.

“The difference was our defense,” U.S. head coach Adam Krikorian said. “I don’t think we were very pretty offensively.”

Since the start of 2016, the U.S. has lost just one game among the Olympics, World Championship, World Cup and World Super League Final. That came in group play in Tokyo.

The U.S. won a believed-to-be record 69 consecutive games from April 2018 to January 2020 and went into the Tokyo Games on a 172-5 run over the previous five and a half years.

The string of six consecutive global championships — Olympics or worlds — is the longest ever for men or women. The span of global titles — now seven years — matches the Yugoslavian men, who won two Olympic titles and two world titles from 1984-91.

Seven of the 13 Tokyo Olympians returned for these worlds, led by Tokyo Olympic MVP Maddie Musselman, who scored five goals in Saturday’s final, goalie Ashleigh Johnson, who blocked 10 Hungary shots, and captain Maggie Steffens, who scored once Saturday.

Rising Stanford junior Ryann Neushul, whose older sisters Kiley and Jamie were on Olympic gold-medal teams, made her world championship debut in Budapest and scored three goals Saturday.

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