Is World Aquatics defying IOC or taking leadershipby reinstating Russia?

World Aquat­ics pres­i­dent Cap­tain Hu­sain Al Musal­lam is one glob­al sport leader who has dis­played no fear in tak­ing ac­tion that he be­lieves is in the best in­ter­est of his or­gan­i­sa­tion.

​In re­cent days, World Aquat­ics con­firmed it will al­low ath­letes from Rus­sia to com­pete with­out re­stric­tions, com­plete with their na­tion­al flag and an­them. This is a de­ci­sive and in­flu­en­tial de­ci­sion from one of the Olympic Move­ment’s most pow­er­ful in­ter­na­tion­al sports fed­er­a­tions. The Russ­ian Olympic Com­mit­tee (ROC) re­mains for­mal­ly sus­pend­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC), a sus­pen­sion orig­i­nal­ly im­posed in Oc­to­ber 2023.

​As is al­ways the case, there are those who will ques­tion the “right­ness” of his ac­tions; that is par for the course. One year ago, he vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go with oth­er mem­bers of his del­e­ga­tion, in­clud­ing Brent Now­ic­ki, World Aquat­ics ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Dale Neuburg­er, World Aquat­ics trea­sur­er, Mau­reen Croes, Pan Am Aquat­ics pres­i­dent, and James Gib­son, World Aquat­ics swim coach ad­vi­sor.

​To­day’s Things That Mat­ter is not fo­cused on the specifics of that note­wor­thy and his­toric vis­it, one that holds sig­nif­i­cant up­side po­ten­tial for the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, long-term sus­tain­able aquat­ic de­vel­op­ment, and sport tourism in T&T. There were sev­er­al key stake­hold­ers in those April 2025 meet­ings, in­clud­ing Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASATT), the na­tion­al gov­ern­ing body (NGB) for Aquat­ics in T&T, the Min­istry of Sport, and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T. Pro­gress­ing those dis­cus­sions past the “on­ly talk stage” would pri­mar­i­ly be the purview of those three en­ti­ties. The ques­tion can be asked: one year lat­er, what’s the sta­tus?

​At this junc­ture, for the sake of full dis­clo­sure and trans­paren­cy, let me place on the ta­ble the in­for­ma­tion that dur­ing his vis­it, I would have re­ceived a to­ken of recog­ni­tion from the World Aquat­ics pres­i­dent for my pub­lic ad­vo­ca­cy re­gard­ing the in­clu­sion of all 50-me­tre dis­ci­plines on the Olympic pro­gramme. That to­ken of recog­ni­tion has no bear­ing on any­thing I may say, neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive, sur­round­ing World Aquat­ics or its pres­i­dent. My opin­ion is based on my in­ter­pre­ta­tion of in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main.

​World Aquat­ics stat­ed it would re­move re­stric­tions which had re­quired Russ­ian and Be­laru­sian ath­letes to be vet­ted and to com­pete un­der neu­tral sta­tus.

“Se­nior ath­letes with Be­laru­sian or Russ­ian sport na­tion­al­i­ty will be per­mit­ted to com­pete in World Aquat­ics events in the same way as their coun­ter­parts rep­re­sent­ing oth­er sport na­tion­al­i­ties, with their re­spec­tive uni­forms, flags and an­thems,” World Aquat­ics said in a state­ment.

World Aquat­ics pres­i­dent Al Musal­lam as­sert­ed: “We are de­ter­mined to en­sure that pools and open wa­ter re­main places where ath­letes from all na­tions can come to­geth­er in peace­ful com­pe­ti­tion.”

Ukraine has pre­vi­ous­ly ob­ject­ed to ef­forts to al­low Russ­ian ath­letes to re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion. It led to boy­cotts of the Par­a­lympic open­ing and clos­ing cer­e­monies af­ter Rus­sians were al­lowed to com­pete un­der their na­tion­al flag.

While the World Aquat­ics de­ci­sion ap­plies on­ly to its own events, like the World Cham­pi­onships, it rais­es a sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion: Is it that World Aquat­ics has de­cid­ed to lead by ex­am­ple on a con­tentious is­sue? And if so, by tak­ing such a de­ci­sion, are they de­fy­ing the IOC, and will they ul­ti­mate­ly in­flu­ence the IOC’s de­ci­sion to­ward a full re­turn of Russ­ian ath­letes ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games?

Ac­cord­ing to the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, there was no im­me­di­ate re­sponse to a re­quest for com­ment from the IOC.