As seen on Swiminfo today.......so much for citizenship eh?! And we complain about masters "superteams"!
Draganja Changing Allegiances to Qatar
ZAGREB, Croatia, December 7. WHILE South Africa’s Roland Schoeman has spurned an offer to switch his allegiance to Qatar, the same cannot be said for Croatian Duje Draganja. The sprint sensation, a 24-year-old, recently accepted a lucrative offer to swim for the Middle Eastern nation, which has been chasing high-profile athletes by offering significant sums of money.
Before accepting the offer from Qatar, which is believed to be at least $1 million, Draganja gave Croatian swimming officials the opportunity to keep him swimming under his homeland’s flag. Ultimately, though, the Arab nation won out and Draganja is expected to race for Qatar at next year’s World Short Course Championships in Shanghai, China.
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Former Member
Only at the most elite levels of college swimming are the swimmers effectively professionals (though not according to the NCAA.) Those swimmers are on the teams that recruit from across the country to get the best swimmers to attend state universities, and from across the world to get the best swimmers to attend state and private universities, and get the swimmers that are best served, financially and professionally, by swimming at that school.
Let the professionals go where they want, and lets stop trying to put them in artificial 'teams.'
Letting professionals go where they want is not relevent to the issue of whether there should be high school or college swimming teams.
Even at the amateur level there is nothing wrong with a swimmer deciding to swim with team A in city A, even though the swimmer lives in city B that has a team B. Why should it be different for the established swimmers? Or should they feel special affection for the *nation* of their birth, even though it may persecute their ethnic group, not approve of women wearing speedos, or have no swimming program of merit?
Only at the most elite levels of college swimming are the swimmers effectively professionals (though not according to the NCAA.) Those swimmers are on the teams that recruit from across the country to get the best swimmers to attend state universities, and from across the world to get the best swimmers to attend state and private universities, and get the swimmers that are best served, financially and professionally, by swimming at that school.
Let the professionals go where they want, and lets stop trying to put them in artificial 'teams.'
Letting professionals go where they want is not relevent to the issue of whether there should be high school or college swimming teams.
Even at the amateur level there is nothing wrong with a swimmer deciding to swim with team A in city A, even though the swimmer lives in city B that has a team B. Why should it be different for the established swimmers? Or should they feel special affection for the *nation* of their birth, even though it may persecute their ethnic group, not approve of women wearing speedos, or have no swimming program of merit?
