BUDAPEST, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Passion and expertise are the two key ingredients without which the 19th FINA World Championships could not have been organized in Budapest, and surely not under just four months, David Szanto, COO of the organizing committee, told Xinhua here on Saturday.

"You have to have the passion...the entire organizing committee loves aquatics, loves sports, loves the athletes," Szanto explained.

He underlined that he and his team tried to accommodate all the needs of the athletes coming to Budapest.

"In the last five years, we have organized several large events, FINA events, aquatics events, water polo, swimming, open water swimming, so we had the team, we had the expertise, and that was the only reason we said yes four months ago," he added, listing the elements that allowed his 40-member strong core team to jump into this challenge in February.

Szanto made good use of his personal expertise as well, as he was also the sports head of the organizing committee of the 17th FINA World Championships in Budapest back in 2017.

According to Szanto, to organize such an international event in such a short time was an incredible challenge fueled by the need to give an opportunity to compete for the athletes.

He said that the task had been an incredible challenge for all of them to organize a world championships of this scale, as it would normally take at least three to four years for the preparations, however, they only had four months.

The event was to have been held in Fukuoka, Japan between May 13 and 29. But FINA postponed the event to 2023 due to the health impacts of the Omicron variant and the pandemic measures in place in Japan. To fill the gap, Budapest was installed in February.

Laughing, Szanto admitted that sometimes they felt it was "crazy" to have accepted the challenge, as the whole process had been a "huge run against time."

The chief operating officer said their goal was that the athletes finally have the opportunity to compete, as they had not competed in a World Championships since 2019.

"So for three years they have been waiting and waiting for the opportunity, and we took the job primarily for them, and I think we did succeed: they had a very very good world championship."

Szanto also said that the slogan of the championships was "Make History!"

The slogan had a double connotation, as the organizers wanted the athletes to make history through their performances, but they also considered the successful preparation of the event a historical feat by itself.

"We wanted athletes to make history, but we also wanted the organizing committee to make history, to organize an event within four months' time, and I think we did it, we really made history," he underlined.

Szanto was very pleased with the management of the event, and assured he was very proud of not only the organizing committee, but also of Hungary, as they have managed to put together such a large-scale championships.

He said the challenge did not only reside in the fact that they had to "connect the dots" in a competition where there were a lot of different venues in four different cities, but they also had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most of the disciplines took place in and around Budapest. For swimming and diving, the venue was the Duna Arena, which was built before and served as the main venue of the 17th FINA World Championships. Artistic swimming and water polo games were staged on Margaret Island, in the Alfred Hajos Swimming complex.

For the open water swimmers, the place to go into the water is the Lupa lake, located some 10 km north from Budapest. It is an artificial mine-lake, with 3-5m depth almost immediately at the shores. The lakeside was turned into a summer beach paradise so it has a lot of service facilities and buildings, offering very comfortable spaces for large-scale sporting events too.

He underlined that because of the pandemic, they introduced a very strict COVID protocol. "We had a very good medical team, who took care of all this business, and the team were good partners in that. I can say that close to 99 percent of all the people coming here followed this COVID protocol."

Szanto ended the interview by praising Hungarian and Chinese athletes, who did very well in the competition.

"China is of course one of the top nations in the world of aquatics, I was really amazed by their performance, of course in diving they are by far the very best, but also in artistic swimming they did very nice routines," he said.

"China also has great newcomers in swimming and I am sure they will be ready for the 2024 Olympics," he added.

Szanto also informed that a total of 2,370 athletes from 189 countries and regions took part in the large aquatics event, which was organized with the help of some 5,000 people, including volunteers, security staff and caterers.

Szanto will take only a short rest after the Swimming Worlds. He and his team will start working on the preparations of the 2024 World Short Course Swimming Championships in Budapest. Enditem

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)