Had the founding fathers of FINA been still among us, how would they assess what they see today in aquatics? Would the representatives of the eight nations (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary and Sweden) at the initial meeting of 1908 have envisaged anything like this? Perhaps in their dreams? One hundred and ten years - much longer than a lifetime, but... were all 110 years big time? Where did it all start - and where have we got in the meantime?

At the beginning there were eight nations from Europe. Today there are 209 from five continents. The tiny room, the first office, has been transformed into a castle-like headquarters. The first battles in the salty and cold sea water have turned into giant competitions in ultra-modern pools; diving from perfectly shaped starting blocks has replaced starts from shaky boats; speed-aiding, wave-breaking lane-ropes have superseded cords held by buoys. And how would a grand presidential meeting look between founder George Hearn and today's office-holder, Dr Julio C. Maglione? And what would the president (yet to be born) say to his current predecessor in 2128?

Toying with words, toying with thoughts. Still, as the 110th anniversary approaches, it's really worthwhile to devote some time to observing FINA's evolution. It's a tremendous story by any account.

Should have been cancelled in 1896

Alfred Hajos is considered the first Olympic champion in swimming, although in fact he won that race in open water in Athens in 1896. First in the 100m (we could add freestyle but there was no distinction for the strokes then), then a bit later in the 1200m. Hajos had to skip the middle event, held over 500m, as it started right after the 100m had ended - as the swimmers of the first event crossed the finish line in the sea, the entrants of the 500m had already been taken by ships to the start outside Zea Bay. There was no organisation to oversee the scheduling. There was no organisation to take care of the safety of the swimmers - in his autobiography Hajos admitted that he was scared to death as he tried to master the waves in the first part of the 1200m, staged well outside the bay in the open sea. "I didn't swim for the victory. Just swam to survive," he wrote and added that he worried a lot when he watched all the boats leaving the participants behind as everyone wished to see the finish - and not the race itself...

In fact, according to current FINA rules, the entire swimming event should have been cancelled on 11 April 1896: different sources have different data for the water temperatures - from 9 to 13 degrees centigrade - but it was definitely well below the current minimum of 16. Wetsuits? No. Pork fat was used back then: that helped Hajos - dubbed the Hungarian Dolphin after his double triumph - while many of his rivals pulled out of the race because they couldn't stand the cold water.

Or we can take another nice story, from 1904, when there were lanes set up in a lake in St Louis, still, without proper supervision and decision-making system. Participants in the 50 yards final had a huge row on poolside as the referees couldn't decide on the winner. To be blunt, there was a fistfight, the top two finishers' camps were entangled in a brawl including the swimmers - Scott Leary (USA) and Zoltan Halmay (HUN) - plus the refs from the respective nations, accompanying people... In the end, a re-swim was ordered and Halmay won that by a clear margin.
Halmay was one of the first to be regarded a world record-holder. However, without proper pool facilities back then, world records were claimed in all possible distances and environments.
Order was needed, for sure.
It arrived, four years later.

"More by accident than intention"

"I thought that since the representatives of all Nations were in London for the Olympic Games of 1908, it would be a good opportunity to talk over the vexing question of amateurism and at the same time to compile a list of world records made under similar conditions and under proper supervision."

That was the self-proclaimed aim which led George Hearn, then president of the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA), the governing body of British swimming, to invite representatives of the respective nations to the Manchester Hotel in London, 110 years ago. Eight countries thought it was worth attending, so gentlemen from Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary and Sweden came together to discuss Hearns's ideas. When they entered the hotel, not even Hearns was thinking of founding an international governing body. When, four and a half hours later, they stood up from the table, they had already laid down the basic principles of forming an international organisation which would oversee swimming, diving and water polo on a global level. Those eight nations are regarded as the founders, though a year later, when the French abbreviation FINA (Federation Internationale De Natation Amateur) was officially approved at a meeting held in Paris - where the first rules were also set up - the member federations' list was already longer: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, South Africa, Sweden and the United States of America. A great starting point, in fact: four of the five continents were already part of the process.

Hotel Manchester in London

Although Hearns, in an article written for the 30th anniversary of the federation, admitted that "the formation of FINA in 1908 came about more by accident than intention", he worked tirelessly for the organisation. In many books he is considered the first president but he actually held the positions of General Secretary and Treasurer in the first 16 years. The first president of FINA was elected in 1924: he was Erik Bergvall from Sweden and he was playing water polo in the pool in London (and claimed an Olympic bronze with his team) when the famous meeting in the Manchester Hotel took place.

Becoming the No 1. Olympic sport

Passing a milestone, like this 110th birthday of FINA, usually prompts people to recall the very beginning. Just to see where it all started - and to highlight where the journey took us, members of the aquatic family.
Those gentlemen in the Manchester Hotel surely did not foresee how this governing body would look more than a century later. We might even say that not even 30 years ago did the current landscape appear in anyone's vision. Not even in Cornel Marculescu's vision - nevertheless, Marculescu persuaded the leadership to take a bold move and create a stand-alone FINA Office. Today, its existence might be considered inevitable: not a single global event can be run without a professional administration. Before 1986, the FINA Office was the secretariat of the federation president. And from the start until 1988 - with the exception of the period of World War II - a president's term was limited to four years, no re-election was possible. A fine democratic element, but at the same time it might not have encouraged people think of long-term projects. There was no think-tank in the background. While several sports already staged world championships, FINA didn't have its own big event, the focus was solely on the Olympic Games. (Swimming and athletics are regarded as the two legs of the Olympics upon which, in a sense, the Games stand. So it would be interesting to look into what prevented the leaders of these two sports from launching a world showcase earlier - in fact, they were almost the last among the major sports to do it. FINA waited until 1973, while athletics needed 10 more years to stage their first-ever world championships.)
The beginnings of the FINA Worlds were also shaky. The inaugural edition was planned for 1971 but due to financial difficulties it had to be postponed until 1973. Based on its success, it was immediately repeated two years later but then came the first switch to hold them in mid-term (of the Olympic cycle) and every four years, like football (since 1930). Not until the new millennium did we see the return of the biennial FINA World Championships - since 2001 they have been staged in odd-numbered years and they have grown into an event which has an outstanding impact in the global sport market.

We might say that even though creating the international governing body happened early enough, it took some time to start to unleash the full potential of the aquatic disciplines. However, in view of the interest FINA events generate nowadays, we can state that aquatics have caught up since. What's more, now it's considered - and let's say, recognised - as the No. 1 Olympic sport, offering the most medals of all in Tokyo 2020 for the first time in history.

Diversity and universality at its best

There is no other federation which offers such a diversity in its disciplines - perhaps this is one of the big secrets behind this success story. Evolving constantly, aquatics have so many colours beside the basic blue. The speed in swimming, the acrobatics in diving, the beauty and harmony in artistic swimming, the endurance in open water swimming, the joy of play in water polo, the thrills of an extreme sport in high diving... Show another entity which has such a palette (in fact, to have individual sports and a team sport under one umbrella). And FINA goes on growing, as it has just recently been decided to add beach water polo to the World Championships programme in 2019.

These 110 years were full of brilliant stories and outstanding personalities, heroes who pushed aquatics towards greatness. We should be grateful to them and to the national federations as well. At the very beginning there were eight. Today the number stands at 209. It took 70 years to break the 100-member barrier but only 30 to go over 200.

The eight founding nations

Universality is key for FINA's magnificent progression. Many sports struggle to get worldwide exposure and to have really successful athletes from all five continents and to have a large pool of nations capable of producing medal winners. Again, I do not wish to make comparisons with others but all of us can name sports which are fascinating, engage tens of millions... still, the winners of their top events tend to be born in a very limited circle of countries. In aquatics talented athletes can make the podium, even the top step, from any given country. FINA's history has produced Olympic winners from Suriname, Singapore, Kazakhstan. At last year's World Championships we saw the first swimming medal for Egypt, a historic first-ever title in diving for Malaysia, an open water podium for Ecuador, just to recall some great examples which demonstrate: really, it can be anyone's great day.

Spitz, Egerszegi, Phelps, Ledecky, Dressel... - stars in our sky

This comes with numbers reaching unprecedented heights. The most important one, the cumulative TV audience for the World Championships, was close to 7 billion already in 2015. If you have thrilling competitions in six disciplines with a huge pool of medal hopes from several nations, this is a kind of self-explanatory consequence.
Of course, the athletes are always the protagonists and their efforts are the key, especially when a sport is lucky enough to have a giant like Michael Phelps. And his Beijing swims and the feat of winning eight Olympic titles - which obviously rocketed aquatics to the top - could be seen as really special because, before him, there was Mark Spitz and his magnificent seven from 1972. Surpassing such a performance inevitably created outstanding hype, what followed - two more great showings in 2012 and 2016, collecting the most Olympic golds and medals in history - secured a further boost in all fields for swimming.

Though we are heading to the first Olympics without Phelps since 1996 (of course, in 2000 few took a lot of notice of the 15-year old boy), there is nothing to be worried about. New stars have come forward: a young US talent, Caeleb Dressel, has already equalled Phelps's best single-edition medal haul at the Worlds by clinching seven titles in Budapest, and Katie Ledecky is on her way to surpassing Krisztina Egerszegi's Olympic feat of winning five individual golds... but let's not continue to line up the stars of today as it would take way too long.

They are our greats and it's great to have a federation in the background which makes sure of preparing the proper ground for them so the stars can shine while giving their very best.

The last three decades produced a significant development. This might also be owed to the continuity of having only two presidents during this period, first Mustapha Larfaoui under whose tenure aquatics grew really big - and his successor, Dr Julio C. Maglione, whose reign has seen another jump, transforming aquatics into a multi-million-dollar business.
Of course, one cannot forget that those 30 years have been overseen by Executive Director Cornel Marculescu who, in an interview, recalled how it had all started. "I can recall the very beginning in the mid-80s when we sat in an office with one secretary and had one million dollars in the bank."
Back then, it was a small office. This year FINA can proudly stage the grand opening of its own headquarters, a villa like a castle in a magnificent neighbourhood in Lausanne, with a staff of more than 40 as well as over a hundred million in the bank. Participation at the major meets is no longer a financial challenge for any member federation, as most of the costs are covered. Making a living as an athlete in aquatics is open to more and more, in the top tier even having the means to lead a happy and trouble-free life has also become a reality, thanks to outstanding sums offered in prize money in all disciplines in almost all FINA events.
Well, this is something those fine gentlemen around the table in the Manchester Hotel surely did not imagine 110 years ago... Still, seeing the position of FINA on the global sport stage, they might be proud of their creation.