With its 202 Member National Federations over the five continents, the Fédération Internationale de Natation, FINA (founded in 1908), is a universe of five different sports - swimming, open water swimming, diving, water polo and synchronised swimming - practised by millions of athletes worldwide. FINA also organises the Masters World Championships in aquatics.

As its main objectives, FINA pursues the development of Aquatics throughout the world, by providing a drug free sport, by adopting uniform rules and regulations for its competitions, and by increasing the number of facilities worldwide.

Outstanding accomplishments in the last decades have included the introduction of the World Championships (1973), the World Cups (1979), World Swimming Championships in 25m-pool (1993), Diving Grand Prix (1994) and Diving World Series (2007), the Water Polo World Leagues (2002 for men, and 2004 for women), and the Synchro World Trophy in 2006. Two open water circuits (10km World Cup and Grand Prix) are also organised on a yearly basis.

The popularity of the FINA aquatic sports is constantly growing and deserves a privileged status in the Olympic Movement. In the last Olympics in Beijing (2008), FINA gave a decisive contribution to the Olympic spirit of fair-play, humanity, universality and solidarity.

The FINA headquarters are located in Lausanne (Switzerland) and the privileged access to the FINA World – competitions’ calendar and results, rules and regulations, biographies of athletes, photos, press releases… - can be done through FINA’s website on www.fina.org