Wild West Challenge

By David

This weekend the “2007 Speedo International Age Group Invitational” took place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. If you’ve never been, you should make the effort. It is a special sort of event. I’ve written about it before in an article called “The Biggest Meet in the World?”

Fort Lauderdale's fantastic aquatic center

In spite of my earlier advice the organizers still insist on giving their event an impossibly long and boring title. I’m told years ago the meet was known as the “Wild West Challenge”. Now that’s an improvement I intend to use.

This year’s “Wild West Challenge” was just that. Each session of preliminaries involved two 50m pools operating simultaneously, and only five meters apart. Up to 650 athletes competed in each session in each pool – that’s bloody huge. The standard of those entered wasn’t too bad either. There were Olympians all over the place including, at the risk of being immodest, Rhi Jeffrey from our Club. We also had John Foster and Andrew Meeder, our two other fastest swimmers. But more about them later.

I enjoy the presence of Gary Hall’s Race Club at a swim meet. There’s that slightly rebellious, older athlete feel about the things they do. The men are usually unshaven in a Hollywood, designer, scruffy sort of way – Marlboro men without the cigarette. Not for this team is the regulated march to begin warm ups. Not for them is the coach’s stop watch and whistle demanding obedience. They must work hard though. These guys are as fast as fish. Shows you don’t need to be in the swimming marines to crank out a fast 50 or 400.

I love going to the Swimming Hall of Fame Pool; parking across the road from the Fort Lauderdale beach, admiring skilled roller-bladers dodging Mustangs, Hummers and Corvettes along the beach road, the huge pictures of Johnny Weissmuller and Esther Williams on the Hall of Fame wall, executives with their fishing tackle climbing aboard the Lady Pamela for a trip the website tells me is “just what is needed for everyone to have a memorable experience while in town” and the whole range of sidewalk cafes, pubs and bars – it’s great.

But even the best run meets, and this one certainly merits that title, can experience interesting problems.

One of our swimmers missed the final of his event after another swimmer was disqualified and then reinstated by the referee. This is the massage I got from the Meet Director explaining the reinstatement. “The issue was that the backstroke pole was bent and the wind was blowing the flags away from the wall and in the judgment of the Referee the displaced backstroke flags were the probable cause of the swimmers turn being illegal” Sounds reasonable except that US Swimming Rules demand that swimmers affected by an equipment failure in this way be given the opportunity to re-swim the event; not be reinstated.

In an understandable and commendable effort to speed up the meet two or three events were switched from one pool to another. The men’s 400 however was switched from the East Pool to the West and finally back to the East. For athletes who have swum over 6,000 kilometers for this chance to qualify for the US Olympic Trials or US Summer Nationals changing and recharging the venue on them forty minutes before their event is not fair.

I do not want to imply that these officials are country-cousins, more used to the challenge of high school dual meets. Far from it, in fact one of the most impressive bits of administrating I’ve ever seen came just as the meet was about to end on Sunday night. A horrible rain and lightning front was threatening Fort Lauderdale from the south. There was no chance we would get through the program. And then the officials picked up the pace. I was mightily impressed. In thirty minutes they gained fifteen. And they did it with an easy efficiency that would have been a credit to any of the world class athletes they controlled. The meet was completed and the storm arrived.

I was pretty pleased with our three senior swimmers. Seventeen year old Andrew Meeder, in just his second meet of the season, completed a fine 24.72 and 53.92 double in the 50m and 100m freestyle; both personal bests, both the fastest for his age. John Foster, in his first meet of the season, swam 4.01.52 in the 400m and 52.95 in the 100m freestyle and Rhi Jeffrey won the 100m butterfly in 1.02.61 and the 100m freestyle in 56.20, the fifty-second fastest time in the world this year.

It’s a joy to coach such fine athletes as they work their way towards success or back from difficult days. This last weekend I’d have happily paid to watch them go about their trade. My guess is there is much better to come. It’s going to be a fun ride.

I'll Take The Camera He's Using, Thanks

Off topic (unless you consider the nine-year-old who swam around Alcatraz last year), but we had to share this awesome picture. Click through for the larger image.

In God We Trust, Huh?

By David

That was a truly fantastic 1500 swim of Kate Zeigler. It speaks volumes for her talent, application and discipline. More than that however Zeigler invites us to discuss the role a Christian God plays in athletic success. On several occasions recently she has taken the opportunity presented by her athletic success to promote the role her God has played in seeing these things come to pass. She says her talent comes from “God who gave me the gift of swimming.” Before each event she recites “All things through Christ who gives me strength (Philippians 4.13). Evidently she has the time to repeat the verse through her race.

Craig Lord of Swimnews reports that Zeigler told him, “When races get hard, I'm like 'come on God ...'. It plays a huge role. Over 30 laps (1,500m) I do say that quote quite often. It gets me through the pain; I can clearly remember one practice: it was brutal, a really long set, it was hurting terribly. I kept saying it and said some Hail Marys.”

Now, if Zeigler is telling us about her Christian God as a personal insight into her life it is a good and proper thing. It is no different from those boxers who win their contests and thank Jesus for giving them the strength to beat their fellow man senseless. Whether God gets involved in 1500 meter swims or boxing matches can be debated long into the night. If it makes Zeigler and prize fighters feel better then I guess there is no harm done.

Arthur Lydiard would call such talk a “red underpants moment”. He was referring to an Olympic athlete whom he coached who insisted on wearing red underwear in major races. Lydiard tried to talk him out of it. What would happen, Lydiard argued, if his red underwear went missing on the morning of the Olympic finals? It was fifty thousand miles of training that had made him one of the world’s best runners, not a pair of red underpants. Lydiard failed; at the Olympics the guy wore his red underpants and they worked – much to the relief of his coach and his grateful nation.

Trust in God’s assistance can be taken too far. One very good New Zealand swimmer told me he once shared a room with a competitor in the same event at an international meet. Each night the room mate knelt beside the bed and said a prayer. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, and I would agree. Except that is when the prayer included a loud and strongly worded request that God assist his humble servant beat my informant in tomorrow’s race.

If however Zeigler is suggesting that all of us should adopt Christ as a means of swimming 1500 under 16 minutes then, I think, there is a problem. When I played football for Thorp High School in Wisconsin – it’s off the subject, but the Green Bay Packers team bought my senior class ring – the team coach used to have us recite the Lord’s Prayer with him before running on to the field. It always made me slightly uncomfortable. Why should a loving God take our side compared to the decent set of chaps who represented Stanley High School down the road? It was, I thought, using God in a role that probably made Him most uncomfortable.

It’s also hard to forget that in World War One the British troops at the Battle of the Somme held up signs saying, “God with us.” A hundred yards away the Germans also had signs. They said, “Gott mit uns.” I doubt you need a translation. In the attack the British and French gained 12 kilometres of ground, the taking of which resulted in 420,000 British casualties, plus a further 200,000 French casualties. German casualties were estimated to run at around 500,000. Makes you wonder what would have happened if God hadn’t been with them.

So no, I do not think my job includes teaching Christianity as means to athletic fame. Two John 3.16s do not equal a fast 100 freestyle. It is probably opportune to remind Zeigler and those boxing Christians of Mathew 6.6 “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” The scriptures appear to be saying that Zeigler’s prayers are best kept to herself.

Besides not agreeing with teaching Christianity as a means to athletic fame, the principle would cause me some confusion. Which God would I chose? While the Christian God appears to have helped Zeigler; in track and field the men’s 1500 world record is held by a Morrocan Hicham El Guerrouj, who probably thinks Allah is just the ticket to get you through a fast 1500. The women’s track 1500 world record is held by Qu Yunixia from China. She would probably subscribe to the Buddhist view that “we are what we think”. And then there is the confusion of the first man to break 15 minutes for 1500 swimming, the Soviet athlete Vladimir Salnikov. He could well have accepted the official Marxist position of his nation that all religion “is the opium of the people.”

And as for me, I still think red underwear works best.

RETRACTION: Screw Discipline, Embrace Partying

We've written about the subject of discipline on a traveling team before and, from the sound of our articles, you'd think we were pretty conservative travelers. You'd think that all the teams we've been on have advocated going to bed at ten p.m. the night after competitions are over. You'd think we were boring. This is not so.

We thoroughly advocate partying. Swimming is hard. Swimming requires not just some, but all Friday nights to be spent at home on the sofa, contemplating Saturday morning's training session. More often that not, it requires foregoing Saturday night festivities as well. Swimming means that you can't stay up at watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report because they're on at eleven and you have to get up at five. Sometimes, being a swimmers sucks. So when you can, you should live it up.

Michael Klim decided that it was time to stay up a little past his bedtime after the World Swimming Championships in Melbourne this year. Timed Finals covered the details of the party he hosted, as well as his means of getting around an Australian team function and the punishment that followed, so I needn't relay the details here. The short version is that Klim decided to get the world's best swimmers together at a local nightclub so that they could celebrate having taken part in one of the premier events of their swimming careers. In doing so, he (apparently) told Australian officials that it was a family matter that prevented him from attending an Australian team dinner, taking place on the same evening.

I am not sure what the Australian management's policy is in regards to parties, but I know what it was like between 1998 and 2004. Those guys weren't allowed to do anything without the consent of their coaches. Attending a party was enough to be dismissed from the Australian team indefinitely. Hosting one would have you brought before the Prime Minister. This, may I add, was a rather different culture to that of the German team during the same period of time who apparently advocated that their swimmers drink red wine. Often.

And now for Swimwatch's first poll. Since our email address is democracy@swimwatch.net, it would be stupid of us not to embrace voting every once and a while:

There are reports that Klim lied to his team in order to be free to host his party. While swimmers shouldn't lie to their coaches, they shouldn't be put in the type of position where they're required to. The three best coaches I've ever known were in complete support of what we called "after match functions"; the only stipulation they put on our post-swimming festivities was that we not hurt or embarrass ourselves. With these two criteria in mind, it was still very easy to have a great time.

So now it's your turn. Swimwatch wants to know about the best and worst swimming parties you've ever attended. Or heard about. We'll add our input in the comments, too. Where did they take place? Why were they so good? Why so bad? Do you have photographs? Are those photographs on Flickr? Can we see? Add your anecdotes in the comments. The best story gets a Swimwatch premium membership. No; seriously.

The Queen of Where?

On all that’s decent and proper, would someone take Craig Lord out of circulation for a month and buy him a course in Journalism 101? His insufferable smugness has reared its head again in the Swimnews article describing Don Talbot’s Queen’s Birthday award.

Talbot is an Australian. He is certainly one of the world’s best and most successful swim coaches. He coached in Australia and Canada for years before becoming the AIS Head Coach and finally Australia’s national coach. He probably hasn’t kept count of the number of Olympians he’s helped. Three facts probably not so well known are that Jan Cameron the current New Zealand national coach was Talbot’s wife. Their son was New Zealand’s best backstroke swimmer and swam for a year at Auburn University in the U.S. He represented New Zealand at the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games. But above and beyond all that I swam in Talbot’s Sydney team for two summers. Sadly, I was not one of his stars. However, his ethic of honest toil, hard work and fairness is something impossible to forget and very difficult to match.

During my first morning in his squad, Talbot announced the warm up included a 400 butterfly. I explained that I didn’t do 400s butterfly. “Well now’s a good time to learn,” he growled. Later in that first week and after practice, he was scolding me for not swimming hard enough. When he was annoyed he had the disturbing habit of poking you in the chest with his tough Australian fingers. I backed away from the assault and fell, fully clothed into the pool. I surfaced to find Talbot still explaining the error of my training ways. He probably thought I should do the 400 bloody fly again.

Talbot wasn’t all discipline and anger though. I asked him once what he would do with a problem swimmer I was coaching. What I wanted to hear was get tough, tell her to sort herself out, that sort of thing. Instead the fearsome Talbot said she may just be having a bad day, give her some time and see what happens. Tough but fair, that’s how I found him.

Anyway back to Craig Lord. He says quite rightly that Talbot has received the award “not a moment before it was due”. That’s certainly right. Often straight talking buggers like Talbot don’t get Queen’s honors. They’re usually reserved for those who achieve in a more acceptable, genteel way.

But then Lord goes on to say that Talbot “has been named an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours (that's the Queen of England, for those who live in other worlds, and the honours are given in her name, honorees proposed, in this case, by Australia).”

Now what really upsets colonials like me is when a pom, that’s what we call the English, a race noted for their unbearable international arrogance, claim our bloody Queen. “That’s the Queen of England” he says. No she’s not. In the context of Talbot’s award she’s the Queen of bloody Australia. And when New Zealand swim coach, Duncan Lang was similarly honored she was the Queen of New Zealand.

She may live for most of the year in central London, Windsor and the North of Scotland, but when she does constitutional duties for New Zealand, Australia and several other Commonwealth nations she is our Queen; not the Queen of England doing some colonial service. Your apology is expected Mr. Lord. Your Queen would expect no less.

I do not want to get Swimwatch bogged down in the dull dust of constitutional theory, except to explain that in New Zealand the Queen Lord refers to in Swimnews, has the official title of;

“Elizabeth the Second, By the Grace of God, Queen of New Zealand and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.”

In Australia, when she approved Don Talbot’s award the Queen was;

“Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of Australia and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.”

It’s no wonder the American colonies went to war to get rid of the English. Guys like Lord must have driven them mad. We probably should have done the same thing. I see the Scots are doing their best to get rid of the English too; and all power to them. The Queen is a great constitution base on which to found a democracy. I don’t know how often the Queen reads Swimnews but if she does she must feel embarrassed about the behavior of a least one of her English subjects.

Make Good Choices

The IOC should really do something about controlling who swims at the Olympic Games. FINA should look at the World Championships and major regional meets as well. It is outrageous that the third fastest swimmer in the United States sits at home while some swimmer who'd not qualify for a U.S. State Championship happily adds “Olympic athlete” to his or her resume.

For years two Virgin Island families have had a huge influence on how swimming is run down there. They allowed many local swimmers to accumulate swimming resumes the rest of us can only wonder at: Olympics, World Championships, Central American and Caribbean Games and Pan American Games. You name it; they went there.

I want to stress there was never anything improper in their attendance. The system’s rules allowed it and the influence of their parents ensured it happened. My point is only, should it have been allowed? I’ve helped breaststrokers 20 seconds faster than the Virgin Island version. One of them actually became eligible to compete for the Virgin Islands and won a Caribbean Island’s Championships in a record time. We exploited a loophole in the rules to do it, but nothing all that different from what goes on in these small nations all the time. Shortly after the Championships the rules were changed to make sure we never got away with that again. It seemed to me to be another example of protecting their privileged isolation.

Is it right that small nations can send these swimmers to major events because of where they were born while genuinely world class, potential winners sit at home unable to even enter? It was Rhi who gave me the idea for this article. She told me recently about a friend, Hayley McGregory at USC, who was third in the 100 and the 200 backstroke at the last US Olympic Trials (1:01.94 and 2:13.24). Wouldn’t that be enough to break your heart? No one can tell me she shouldn’t have been at the Games in Athens. At her worst, she would have made the semi-finals in both events. There are probably many of you who can give similar examples: Pablo Moralas in the men’s 100 fly, for example. I just hope McGregory can lift herself to another effort at next year’s trials. No one would deserve it more.

Alternatively she could take a quick trip to the Virgin Islands and chat up one of the power families. That way she wouldn’t even need to swim a trial and she'd be on the plane to Beijing.

I’m not sure how to solve all this. I think what I’d do is leave things as they are, but add a provision that the world’s top-twenty ranked swimmers would receive automatic entry. As world rankings are changing all the time, the IOC or FINA would have to set a date at which the top-twenty would be taken. At least that way, the semi-finals and finals would be a contest between the worlds’s best swimmers. How many would this add to already over populated Games? The table below shows the extra numbers if this was done right now.

EVENT	MEN	WOMEN
50 FR	1	4
100 FR	1	3
200 FR	2	2
400 FR	2	1
800 /1500 FR	0	4
100 BK	0	4
200 BK	3	4
100 BR	2	6
200 BR	1	6
100 FLY	3	3
200 FLY	2	3
200 IM	3	5
400 IM	3	5
TOTAL	23	50

So, the Games would be overcrowded by another 73 athletes. At least the competition would be an honest one, among the world’s best swimmers. A way to cut down the number of entrants would be to set a world-rankings cut-off point at which athletes were not longer allowed to enter. You'd annoy a fair number of people, however. You'd upset the balance that has existed in countries such as the Virgin Islands for quite some time.

One delightful Virgin Island’s moment did involve the patriarch of one of the families. We were sitting around at a Virgin Islands Swimming Federation meeting discussing whether to use the FINA points system as a method of evaluation. The patriarch fumbled in his briefcase and produced some photocopied sheets. This, he said, was an article he’d found on the internet about the use of the FINA points table. He recommended we read it. He said I might be interested as the article was from New Zealand. A quick look revealed that his discovery was an article from Swimwatch that I’d written about a year earlier. I’m a coward; I never said a word.

The matriarch side of both families had a standard answer to every suggested reform, “Oh we’ve never done it that way before,” they said. I began to wonder whether this place - a U.S. colony - was the same country that had put a man on the moon. Arriving on the mainland U.S. assured me that, in fact, it wasn’t.

Whatever happens, something needs to be done to avoid so many of the world’s best swimmers sitting at home watching a race they could win take place on television. The Games should be about determining who are the world’s fastest swimmers. While so many good athletes are left at home, the Olympics are failing to do that. For example, the selection of US professional basketball players at Barcelona in 1992 has had a beneficial effect on basketball world wide. It forced recognition of what world-class actually meant. The standard of the game went up everywhere.

Now, you may say that the above is not in the spirit of the Olympics, but this takes place at World Championships and many other international meets. If you must leave the Olympics the way they are, at least take a look at every other meet on the international calendar. At least some of these world-class sporting events need to take a look at the way they're conducted and to whom they open their doors.

Rugby, Racing and Beer

(A New Zealand song that includes the lines, “Down under they’re mad over their rugby, racing and beer.”)

By David

In New Zealand, rugby is everything. It has the sporting importance that football, basketball and baseball combined have in the United States. On the 20^th June 1987 New Zealand’s national team, the All Blacks, beat France to win the first rugby World Championship. Since then they have played 267 matches and won 224. They’ve lost 38 and drawn 5. That’s a win record of 84%, by any standards a dominating performance.

The All Blacks have been to four World Championships since 1987; they are held every four years. In every one New Zealand has failed to win. A 100% loss record, by any standards a devastating performance. The next World Championships are this year in France. New Zealand will be beaten again.

New Zealand has produced some fearsome competitors. Men and women who it seems have used their home’s smallness to construct an invincible hardness. Sir Edmund Hillary has it. So does Russell Coutts, Brian Lahore, Peter Snell, John Walker, Susan Devoy and quite a few tough and proud others. I hope like hell Dean Barker, the captain of the New Zealand’s America’s Cup challenge being sailed off the coast of Spain just now, has it too.

Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen the current coaching staff of the All Black team do not. Neither, incidentally does New Zealand’s national swimming coach, Jan Cameron. They fall into a group who are also affected by their nation’s size. A group who when the chips are down, when the rest of the world is stacked against them, choke because they are too small to win.

How do I know this? Two reasons; because they’ve always lost before and they make the classic error of weak people, they change their preparation before the big event.

I read a very good article recently by John Leonard, the boss of the American Swim Coaches Association. In it he argued that in a new situation a coach’s success or failure is likely to take three years to emerge. The first year is a honeymoon period where everyone loves everyone, the second year sorts out who wants to be there and who doesn’t and by year three everyone should have a pretty good idea of what the new coach is all about.

That’s how it worked in All Blacks’ Head Coach; Graham Henry’s only other international coaching job. He arrived in Wales billed as the savior, the Great Redeemer of Welsh rugby and took the team on a 10-match winning streak. He left three and a half years later, ultimately a failure.

And now he’s been the All Blacks coach for three years and cracks are beginning to appear. There are good players leaving to play for foreign clubs. Assistant Coach Wayne Smith thought the problem serious enough to say, “"It's a major issue that we need to address as a country. It's not just the Rugby Union who can come up with the answers - the whole country, including the Government, needs to be part of the solution." What on earth has the Government got to do with playing rugby? I can’t imagine the Cowboys asking George Bush to take Terrell Owens for catching practice.

But worst of all Henry decided to change the preparation of his players. In his first two successful years they played a full part in a competition called the Super 14. This year he rested them through most of the Super 14 in preparation for the World Championships. It may work but it’s not good coaching; something that new and untried before the Championships. Henry should know better, but clearly doesn’t.

As the World Championships get nearer these coaching errors will magnify. Eventually they will be fatal. In the semi-finals or maybe the finals, South Africa, England or, God-save-us, Australia will exploit the indecision and roll past the world’s best rugby team.

A good coach like Lydiard would not make Henry’s errors. He wouldn’t ask the Government to select his team. He’d pick the best players wherever in the world they played and if his team were beating everyone in sight he sure as hell would not invent some new program for them just before the World Championships. He would not let the occasion get the better of him.

How do I know?

Because he spent a valuable afternoon telling me what an idiot I’d been changing Toni Jeffs preparation just before the Barcelona Games. I managed to snatch failure out of the jaws of success. My guess is Henry will soon share that not so wonderful experience. What is a mystery is why Henry is repeating the errors he made in Wales. It appears he does not understand the logic of Einstein, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” But he soon will understand.

Content Based Regulation

By David

It’s becoming really difficult to write for Swimwatch. Our comments pages are full of editorial instructions limiting what we can write. While America’s founding fathers probably didn’t have the internet in mind when they came up with the First Amendment, their efforts are a welcome protection from the excesses of some.

In a series of decisions America’s Supreme Court has provided added protection. In the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc. v. Bresler, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell and Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., the Court has defined “actual malice”, we have none and hyperbole, we have plenty.

Let me give you some examples; although even this carries risk. Invariable the use of an example prompts some to scream, “Why are you bringing that up again.” The answer is because it illustrates some point. I would not have thought you needed that explained.

A few years ago Swimwatch published a report on the Auckland Regional Swimming Championships. You may still find it our archives. In it we suggested that Dean Kent, one of New Zealand’s best swimmers, would improve his medley with more work on his freestyle. The next morning we received an irate email from Kent saying we did not have permission to use his name and we were never to do so again. The current American President has shown he is capable of trampling over quite a few of our civil rights. This week I see he even said the names of people visiting the Vice President are a White House secret. But even George W. Bush has not been able to stop the most humble of websites from mentioning his name.

Others that surprise are those who claim ownership. We have written a couple of stories to illustrate certain points. Careful attention was paid to not mention anyone’s name. Names seldom add anything. It’s the events that are of interest. And yet, within hours of publication the people whose names we carefully omitted are posting comments along the lines of, “Hey, it’s me he’s talking about and he shouldn’t!” In some instances, the stories have not been flattering. However, no one on God’s earth knew it was them until they claimed the title. If I read something about myself that did not paint me in a good light, yet left out my name, the last thing I'd do is belly-up to the comments section.

I am amused by respondents who begin their comments with an explanation of their busy lives; much too busy to waste time writing on the internet. Invariably these industrious souls then spend a week writing pages of comments, far longer than the piece that began the process.

The real classics, however, are those who claim Swimwatch is full of lies. Some do it politely; others demand a meeting and some are as insulting as all hell. One young lady referred to one article as “bull crap, all of it, bloody bull crap.” Another reader is forever accusing the site of “telling lies.” The problem is they never identify the lies or in the young lady’s case, the bloody bull crap. What are they saying? Do they think the episode with the old German ladies in France didn’t happen? Do they think I had a glass of wine with two Bavarian ghosts? Are they saying I made up the graph of 500 yard times? I do not mind owning up to mistakes and sincerely apologizing. But if you are going to call me for lying please tell me which bit is the lie. You may recall Rhi Jeffrey asking one “you're-telling-lies” reader to explain her/himself. Unsurprisingly, s/he never replied.

The Mayor of Napier in New Zealand, Barbara Arnott, hated Swimwatch; probably with good cause. We called her out on some pretty shady deals. We took her staff to court and lost only because the court said it did not have jurisdiction. Part way through the clash she called me into her office for a meeting to discuss our differences. She began by telling me she had never read Swimwatch. As the meeting went on her descriptions and knowledge of things that had appeared on became truly miraculous. She remembered things I’d long since forgotten. She was right, she had never read Swimwatch; she’d studied the bloody thing one word at a time. I was tempted to ask if she wanted us to post her each week’s article in a plain brown envelope.

There are also many really good responses. For those we thank you. People like Jay Thomas have added value by expressing a legitimate view without malice. It’s a skill, being able to debate without malevolence. It's something we should all work on, but it becomes difficult when faced with a computer screen and a "publish comment" button.

Finally, I'd like to direct you to a post we wrote about this a few years ago. It covers similar ground as this one does today, but it amuses me that four years have passed and people's online behaviour has not changed much at all.