Katinka Hosszú: swimmer, club owner and ambassador

The International Swimming League (ISL) would like to revolutionise swimming by making it more spectacular and more like a show. ISL’s founder, Konstantin Grigorishin, presented his plans together with three-time Olympic champion Katinka Hosszú in Budapest.

Swimming is not spectacular enough

Even though ISL has not been able to organise any competitions yet, many champions joined already. Not only Katinka Hosszú is among their ambassadors but also the British Adam Peaty, the Italian Federica Pellegrini, the American Ryan Murphy and the Australian Cate Campbell. Furthermore, all of them are Olympic champions – reported hvg.hu.

In fact, ISL already tried to organise a swimming competition last year; however,

FINA threatened swimmers

who wanted to take part in it with a 2-year ban period. Of course, FINA tried to protect its position since ISL is a rival for them. Since then, their opinion has changed a bit, and they also announced the organisation of an invitation-based elite championship, but they did not share too much information about it with the swimmers – added Hosszú.

According to those behind the ISL, swimming is popular but commercially not too successful. This is because

competitions are organised like they were in the 19th century, 

so mostly the relatives of the contestants watch it on the spot. There are too many qualifying rounds, the awards ceremonies are too long, and people can see the swimmers only for a very short time. Therefore, champions cannot be close enough to the public who would prefer to support teams to individuals. Finally, there are not enough competitions for the superstars.

Thus, ISL would like to create a system in which each contestant collects points to their team in fast and show-like contests. According to Grigorishin, it is also important to have a definite start and an end to a season and to have a final winner like in Formula-1 and in American football. For example,