American Olympic swimmer Cody Miller says that he obtained his Worldwide Swimming League solidarity fee for the 2021 season on Saturday.
Replace for the swimming world on the market…. I simply obtained my ISL ‘Solidarity’ fee. Good Vacation shock. 3 years late… however I’m grateful they’re following by means of on the promise. Very cool.
— Cody Miller (@swimiller) December 14, 2024
Miller raced in solely two seasons of the ISL in 2019 and 2021 for the D.C. Trident, skipping the 2020 “COVID-19 bubble” season. All swimmers who participated within the 2021 season, which wound up being the final season of the preliminary iteration of the worldwide professional swim league, have been promised $7,500 in 5 month-to-month installments. That was a lower from the $15,000 that was provided for the 2020 season to assist athletes endure the Olympic delay.
The league repeatedly had points with making funds on time, an issue that was exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The solidarity funds have been supposed to start in October 2021.
The league’s monetary backer Konstantin Grigorishin was born within the USSR and bought Ukrainian citizenship in 2016. A lot of the billionaire’s enterprise holdings are situated in Ukraine, and he has additionally made cash through the import of vitality and pure sources from Russia. In 2018, he was certainly one of 322 Ukrainian residents that the Russian Federation imposed sanctions in opposition to.
At the very least certainly one of Grigorishin’s corporations was seized by the Ukrainian authorities as a “strategically essential enterprise,” a transfer that the federal government stated was made “in reference to army necessity.”
Earlier this yr, one swimmer informed SwimSwam that they obtained a textual content message from ISL commissioner Ben Allen that the Tokyo Frog Kings’ solidarity fee had been despatched to the staff and {that a} plan was in place to make remaining funds. That swimmer, who’s on one other staff, stated on the time that they nonetheless had not been paid.
The invasion of Ukraine additionally cancelled the deliberate 4th season of the ISL, which was initially postponed to 2023. Whereas folks near the league say that organizers haven’t given up hope of a revival, the league workplace has been quiet for a number of years and many of the groups’ prior common managers have moved on to different enterprises.
Athletes mulled a league boycott over non-payment within the 2021 season. Jean-François Salessy, the ex-general supervisor of the Power Commonplace staff, and Hubert Montcoudiol, the ex-commercial director of the Worldwide Swimming League, accused ISL of monetary mismanagement in a letter despatched to SwimSwam in September 2021. Salessy and Montcoudiol wrote that ISL has allegedly uncared for to correctly pay supporting distributors and other people, like press officers, site owners, staff managers, and even some elite swimmers. Salessy and Montcoudiol didn’t title anybody particularly that has been sufferer to the alleged practices, however they wrote that what they’ve witnessed straight contradicts ISL’s promise to honor all obligations to suppliers forward of season three.
The league additionally launched a press release in 2020 that it has confronted monetary challenges, however that it wished to maneuver on regardless of stated challenges. At the moment, SwimSwam reported that a number of season one distributors hadn’t been paid their full quantity owed, however the league vowed to pay all cash owed earlier than Season 3. The league additionally added that it was working for the higher good of the game.
Power Commonplace received the titles within the 8-team league in 2019 and 2021, whereas the Caeleb Dressel-led Cali Condors received the 2020 season. Miller completed ranked 182nd out of 308 swimmers within the season-long MVP standings.
Miller received two Olympic medals in 2016: gold within the 400 medley relay and bronze individually within the 100 breaststroke.
