Seems Like FINA may be Against Russian Aggression

The FINA World Masters Championships are being held in Montreal from August 2-9th and there was something that caught my attention while I reviewed the schedule, and could be an indicator that FINA is against Russian aggression in Ukraine. This is not the first time that an international sports governing body has made, or what seems to have been a decision that will not affect the participants in their sport, but does clearly send a message of disapproval of some political events in the world. FINA or the Fédération Internationale de Natation oversees the sports of swimming, open water swimming, synchronized swimming, water-polo and diving.

Some of us can remember the boycott of the Moscow Olympic in 1980 shortly after the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan. In total sixty-five countries did not take part in the Moscow games that summer in protest. The following Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles were boycotted in a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the previous Summer Olympic Games, led by the USSR and their friends, totalling either sixteen or eighteen nations boycotting the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games in 1984, depending on the source you want to believe.

As a volunteer for this international competition in one of the sports I dedicated a good part of my young adult life to, I decided to explore the schedule. Everything seemed pretty normal. With competition of Synchronized Swimming and Waterpolo beginning as early as tomorrow Sunday July 27th. A few days for swimmers to train and acclimatize before a competition at such a level starts on Sunday August 3, 2014, and with the official Opening Ceremonies taking place on Saturday, August 2, 2014.

As I scrolled down the page what hit me were the words which followed the words Closing Ceremony was followed with the following: There will be no Closing Ceremony on Aug 9th as requested by FINA and because of the presence of the mayor of Kazan, Russia, at the Opening Ceremony. When I first read it I had to think twice. In fact it was a similar knee-jerk reactions as the Soviets had had in 1984. Why couldn't have his presence been refused in the first place for the Opening Ceremony. Hostilities, towards Ukraine from the part of Putin's Puppet army have been going on for some time now, but now in retrospect it must have been the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH 17 on July 17, 2014 which would have been the last straw and drew FINA's attention to what is really going on in Ukraine.


Schedule of the 15th FINA World Masters Championships, july 27th to August 10, 2014
While all sports can be very political, FINA isn't the big money-maker that FIFA though seems to have in this move at least made a minor statement. It is time that the international communities pressure FIFA from taking away the World Cup in Russian in 2018. Please visit http://boycottputinnow.com to put pressure on the World Cup's sponsors and join other such efforts on social media to take away the WC-2018 from the evil empire of pariah Putin.

Whether we can consider this as a vote against Russian aggression in Ukraine can not be certain, but I'm sure many are asking why did it have to take the lives of 298 innocent victims for the world to wake up. I know I will have to treat anyone I meet at this competition fairly, as a volunteer of the organizing committee, but so help me if I meet anyone who watches and believes the blatant propaganda being spewed out by Putin's Propaganda Prostitutes. I may just have to direct them to someone who doesn't know better of what is going on in the world, after politely telling them what I think.

Vasyl Pawlowsky Independent Consultant
The commentary of this was first published on the WPawlowsky.com site.

A whole different world

Well I've taken some time off of blogging for a number of different reasons, the first being the lack of time... While I had to attend the Braty bluzu concert at Khmilna botchka - a business trip out of the country prevented me from doing so. I was in touch with some friends who had called me asking me about the gig, and where to get tickets prior to the show, but some of them unfortunately, also somehow didn't make it.

So know, for the next few days I am in a different world. I am trying to meet certain people in the middle of the holiday season in a land far away from my usual stomping ground around Kyiv, but on a stomping ground that holds many fond memories and where i grew up. While meetings with some people I've needed to meet haven't worked out - I had some surprises yesterday when attending my niece and nephew's swim meet. I met former team mates that I swam with competitively many years ago at the Pointe Claire Swim Club. It was good to see them and it brought back some memories...

Last night I sat with my brother and some friends and reminisced about our life guarding days at Dixie Pool and LaSalle Park Pool in our home town. There will be a little more of that on Saturday when Dixie Pool the place I spent my summer months in as a kid and some of my first jobs at in my late teens and early adult life will be celebrating its 45th Anniversary...

Today my brother says to me... "Hey, Vasyl... I just say your name in the Gazette!" He was right... I had put in a comment on another place I spent hundreds of hours training from about 1974 through 1981...

The place I grew up was always a different world from most places in Canada... we probably had the highest percentage of swimming pools per capita in Canada - we had attitude - and as I see my brother's kids growing up... I know why my parents settled in this neighborhood... It still has to be one of the coolest places to raise a family.

I listened to local FM radio today... and you know... Kyiv's radio stations have a long way to go before they come close to the quantity and variety of quality music that one can hear here... Anyhow, time to get home - get to sleep... More meetings tomorrow.