The FINA Swimming World Cup is an international series of short course (25 m) swimming meets organized by FINA, the International Federation for swimming. The series was started in the 1988/1989, and is open to swimmers from FINA member countries.
The series has traditionally been held in the northern hemisphere's winter-time (October-February range), placing it within the normal short course competition times for many countries (with long course competition predominating in summer months). In some years, the World Cup has been held across a New Year's, leading to dual-year designations for a given series (e.g. "2004-2005 World Cup"), and in other years, the series has been held entirely on one side of a New Year's Day, leading to a single year description. This latter is the current format in place (e.g. the "2010 World Cup").
Currently, the overall 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers are awarded prize money.
Famous quotes containing the words swimming, world and/or cup:
“Loosed betwixt eye and lid, the swimming beams
Of memory, blind school of cuttlefish,
Rise to the air, plunge to the cold streams....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“The cup of Morgan Fay is shattered.
Life is a bitter sage,
And we are weary infants
In a palsied age.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)