Aqua Crest Swim Team

Not So Intelligent

2009-04-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

By David

I’ve long been a fan of the scholarship of Jonty Skinner. His works on a wide range of swimming subjects have provided insight and wisdom to a generation of coaches. However, his most recent article published in the American Swim Coaches Association Newsletter Volume 2009-01 falls well short of his own high standards.

Before addressing the shortcoming in Jonty Skinner’s work, I find it quite extraordinary that the American Swim Coaches Association continue to publish article after article critical of modern swim suits. There are some things in this sport that are worthy of universal condemnation; for example, smoking bongs, popping steroids, fighting outside bars. Swimsuits are not in that category. There are valid arguments for and against full body suits. An organization that promotes itself as representing all of its members has a duty to address both sides of this sort of debate, not just the views of its executive. In this duty, the American Swim Coaches Association has failed its membership. Their discussion on this subject has been biased, one sided and unenlightened.

But back to Jonty Skinner’s article. Here is a list of what I mean.

“Technological progress – shouldn’t come at the price we appear to have paid.”

And what price is that? Skinner does not tell us. Perhaps he expects us to nod like robots and shrink in fear at the dangers of these body suits. I call it Bush logic. George W. Bush did this all the time: weapons of mass destruction, world terrorism – none of it supported, most of it not even true, just the threat, just the fear. Skinner has learned the Bush logic well.

“These changes have left us all on a slippery slope.”

That sounds bad even if we don’t know what the slippery slope means. And the ultimate Bushism; all this is seriously dangerous when FINA are “not dealing with it very well.” My God we face these dangers and we’re unprotected – call in the Marines; invade Switzerland. Now, I’m no great fan of FINA but the truth is FINA are doing quite a good job of sorting out what swim suits are fair. But that’s not news the conservative wing of swimming want to hear.

And then there is this gem:

“Having said that we’ve just gone through two summers where performances have been radically altered by the suits.”

Again, no evidence is provided to support that outrageous claim. Just because different suits were introduced and swimmers broke records does not prove the suits were the sole cause. And Jonty Skinner should know that. Two events occurring at the same time are not sufficient to establish that one caused the other. What else coincided with swimmers setting these new records? Were swimmers paid more? Did more swimmers have swimming as their sole occupation? Did they have access to better training, nutrition, medical backup and administration support? The answer to all those is yes, yes and yes. Does Jonty Skinner consider any of that? No, it’s just the suits.

But then the ultimate dishonesty – the perfect Bushism:

“Why accept something as genuine when you can tear it down by speculating about the possibility of drugs? You don’t even have to provide evidence; rumors do the job. My own feeling is that it’s not a suggestion I care to make.”

Here, in the middle of an article so full of speculation and rumour, Skinner feels the need to publish a denial just in case anyone picks the deception. In this context “It’s not a suggestion I care to make” is in the same league as, “I don’t want to be rude, but.” Because the sin is denied does not mean it has not occurred. Jonty Skinner may not feel like making a myriad of negative rumours and suggestions. That has not stopped him from doing it.

Although Skinner is South African by birth, he concludes his article with a classic piece of Americana – the French are cheats:

“The suits reduced the function of endurance in the equation. The French sprinters could now finish races with sustained velocity using in some cases inferior techniques.”

So there you have it: the French are unfit and don’t swim as well as Americans. In fact, their fitness and technique are bloody awful. But because of the new suits, those cunning Froggies can now beat us, something they would never be able to do unless they were up to no good. This sort of talk is dishonest and un-American. Clearly the new suits need to be changed if those hideous and inferior French swimmers are using them to unfairly beat clean cut, honest Americans. Jonty Skinner, you should be ashamed.

And in the final paragraph we hear that “the suit is impacting performance on a metabolic and biomechanical level.” Now most readers will know that if your goal is to impress the not-so-bright, use long words. As a final insult to our intelligence Skinner has resorted to that ploy. Certainly metabolic and biomechanical will do. Skinner’s case would have been better served had he spent more time explaining just how the new suits altered a swimmer’s metabolic or biomechanical anything. Certainly that would have been more constructive than depreciating the performance of good French swimmers.

We are unimpressed.

Strange Buggers

2009-04-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

By David

Thanks to swimming, I’ve met some strange buggers. There may be a few poor souls who do not appreciate the full measure of being a "strange bugger". I feel for your burden. Clearly “no child left behind” has failed to provide you with an important life skill. Not being able to determine who in this world is a strange bugger could cost you dearly one day. Let me take a minute to explain something you should already know.

Where I come from, a “strange bugger” is a gentle derogatory term used to describe someone who’s a bit odd; an individual with few social skills; someone you’d avoid having lunch with between preliminaries and finals. There are a few swim coaches I know who are strange buggers. One of them was a New Zealand Special Olympics National Coach. He always seemed angry about something. He was one of those unfortunate souls who got far too nervous for his own athletes, developing a predilection towards beating himself on the bum with a rolled up meet programme while his swimmers were competing. Two hundred pounds lighter, on a horse in the Melbourne Cup, his behaviour would be entirely appropriate. But as a coach at a swim meet, it comfortable qualified him as a strange bugger.

One of the guys Swimming New Zealand had as their CEO was a strange bugger. He was a short fellow who displayed all the unfortunate characteristics commonly attributed to those physically challenged in the height department. I had a couple of run-ins with him. Most memorable was the occasion he threatened to have Toni Jeffs and I banned for bringing the sport into disrepute when Toni accepted sponsorship from Brian le Gross, the owner of Wellington’s Liks strip club. Brian now owns New Zealand’s largest strip club, The White House, in Auckland. Their VIP lounge features dark blue Oval Office carpet, a US Presidential Seal and is called Monica’s.

Swimming New Zealand took an extremely dim view of the Liks’ sponsorship. Their strange bugger called me and recited a list well worn clichés: “family sport” and “disrepute” featured prominently. I was summoned to a meeting with Swimming New Zealand’s Board the following morning. Things were looking pretty black until I explained to the meeting that the idea of approaching Brian for financial help came from an advertisement promoting Liks that I’d seen on the back page of Swimming New Zealand’s monthly magazine. The strange bugger had accepted Brian’s money before Toni. She just got more. The charge of disrepute was dropped.

One of Swimming New Zealand’s long time National Coaches was a strange bugger. He ripped into Jane in a Sydney hotel once; told her she was not good enough to be swimming in World Cup events and should go home. A week later at a World Cup meet in Berlin she broke the 15 year age group national record for 100IM. Two years later, he had to present her with the medal for winning the NZ Open women’s 100 Breaststroke title. The same guy may actually qualify for the superlative, “bloody strange bugger”. Toni told me he asked her and several other national team members to sit in a circle and hold on to a broom handle he held in the centre. They should then close their eyes and think about their race because, he said, “Out of touching comes strength.” Now that’s a bloody strange bugger, if you ask me.

The current New Zealand National Coach is a strange bugger as well. In a country too small for such a rule she imposed a FINA 900 point cut off standard for swimmers wanting to qualify for this year’s World Championships. The qualifying time had to be swum in the final of the New Zealand Swimming Championships being held this past weekend. Melissa Ingram just missed the 900 point time in her event. Now, I must tell you, I sat through all last year’s World Cup meets in Europe and watched Melissa Ingram take on and beat most of the world’s best swimmers. She made me proud to be a New Zealander. There she was, no manager, no coach, no massage therapist in tow, on her own, taking on the world and winning. In everything she did, she upheld the best traditions of Snell, Loader, Walker, Halberg, Quax and Dixon. She’d be one of the first I’d have on my team. Apparently New Zealand is so overwhelmed with talent just now they’re leaving her at home. Let’s wait until Rome. We may have another National Coach candidate for title of “bloody strange bugger”.

Strange buggers are not the sole property of New Zealand. The US has its share. The former President of Florida Gold Coast Swimming sent me a letter complaining about my behaviour – I think I called a spade a bloody shovel. At the same time he was apparently misbehaving with an underaged girl and emailing pornographic pictures of young boys to his mates. He’s a real bad strange bugger. The thing I never understood about all that was one of my swimmers told me about the girl a few months after I arrived in Florida. How on earth did the people who elected this strange bugger President not know about it? I guess those closest to the problem often miss the obvious.

Next week I was thinking of writing a piece on another group of swimming people; those who qualify for the superlative, “bloody dag”. This is a very different group from strange buggers. I hate to have to explain what a dag actually is, and it is surely a reflection of what strange places Australian and New Zealand are that only the very best and most respected of people qualify for that honorific.

The Cautionary Case of Nick D'Arcy

2009-03-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

... or why we were not surprised.

By Jane

Last week, Australian swimmer Nick D'Arcy received a fourteen-month suspended sentence for his March 2008 assault on former Australian breaststroke star Simon Cowley. If you're into swimming, you know about this. The assault took place hours--not days--after D'Arcy won the 200m butterfly at the Australian Olympic Trials, supposedly securing his place on the country's Olympic team. The injuries inflicted when the mean end of D'Arcy's elbow connected with Cowley disfigured Cowley enough to require metal plates be implanted in his face. D'Arcy was accordingly thrown off the Australian swim team. Almost exactly a year after the assault, he has qualified to swim in the Rome World Championships and has been handed his official punishment.

It was a horrifying incident and it sullied the name of swimming, a sport generally regarded as being relatively violence-free. In all the discussion about the fight, however, something very troubling was barely touched upon, and it's something only a member of the swimming community could really vocalise. It was the fact that many of us were not at all surprised.

Of course we were surprised. No one imagines that a newly-crowned national champion and Olympian would allow himself to do something the likes of what D'Arcy did. Living in the United States at the time (a country not nearly as obsessed with swimming as Australia), I didn't find out about the fight until I went to Sydney at the beginning of April. Sitting in a Sydney bar and listening to the story, about a kilometre from the scene of the fight, I couldn't believe swimming had descended to the level of rugby league and British football. We're nice kids. We don't do things like destroy each other's faces.

But hindsight is really interesting, and now, a year on, I am not surprised. In fact, it's amazing that it took until 2008 for someone to do something like this.

When I began swimming well, I was about fifteen and it was 1999. I am two and a half years older than Nick D'Arcy and I never knew him, but I knew the two generations of male swimmers who came before him. They were not saints, but their culture was different.

You had your smart-arses and your idiots, and we all liked a drink, but I remember there being a lack of serious machismo in those people. When I say serious, I mean that they did not take themselves as seriously as they might have. Fantastic athletes like James Hickman of Great Britain and Bill Kirby from Australia were polite and personable, and certainly never displayed any tendancy towards violence. A few years later, I'd find some of their successors, across many countries, to be very different. Suddenly, a selection of the Aussie guys no longer smiled at you: they leered at you with curled lips and suggestive expressions. They weren't the types of people you'd want to be around when they'd been drinking, and you'd never let yourself be alone with them, alcohol or not. You had your notable exceptions from the previous generation, such as the disgraced Scott Miller, but the culture was not one in which anyone felt uncomfortable.

Sometime in between the year 2000 and March 31, 2008, a culture grew in swimming where some of these guys really believed that they were all that. I speak from experience and opinion alone, but some of them believed their own hype to the extent that they thought they should have anything and anyone they wanted. The eventual result of a culture like this is usually an incident like that between D'Arcy and Cowley. However, it's only a 'wake-up call' if the community realises what really happened.

Again, I'm not saying that the 1999 generation were angels, but they were different. Some will blame this on money: get good enough nowadays, and swimming can now make you very rich. I don't necessarily believe that this is the crux of the problem; however, I do believe that those people in charge of swimming federations worldwide should be very mindful of the culture building in their midst. There is a marked difference between having 21 year olds misbehave, spend all night after a competition at bars, puke in a gutter and even mouth off at a teammate, and letting a culture manifest where menacing arrogance is acceptable. When I think about what I saw become acceptable swimming culture, I'm not surprised that Nick D'Arcy did what he did.

It isn't that far fetched that swimming could be let to turn into rugby league or European football, where every second week wouldn't be complete without a competitor being hauled before a judge for smacking someone around. I know a lot of swimmers who do embody the characteristics of those people who were great in the 90s. My father coaches some of them in Florida. In other parts of the world, however, there's a dangerous culture brewing. Let D'Arcy's case be a warning, and stifle a culture that could turn swimming into something none of us want it to be.

D = Square Root of (X2 – X1)2 + (Y2 – Y1)2

2009-03-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

By David

Last week, an American swim coaching magazine spent several pages discussing distance. In case you’re not familiar with the concept of distance, I’ve used the mathematical formula as the title to this article. I happen to be a strong supporter of distance: not the formula, but distance training. No one who has been an Arthur Lydiard disciple for as long as I have could be anything else.

Our team has just completed their ten week aerobic conditioning build up in preparation for the 2009 summer season. The table below shows the distances several swimmers covered each week and their total for the period.

Skuba’s 880 kilometers is a long way to swim. It’s not the best I’ve seen. Both Toni Jeffs and Jane Copland got through 1000 kilometers in the ten weeks. Jane did it on several occasions [Editor's note: I think it was only twice :)]. However, 880 kilometers is certainly world class distance conditioning. The lost 50 kilometers in week five, when Skuba was ill with a flu type bug that went around the team, cost him the chance of a build up in excess of 900 kilometers. This build up was Skuba’s first attempt at a full tens and was a very good effort. It will yield beneficial physiological changes that will result in faster swim times; but more of that later.

Just as impressive was the build up by 12-year-old Jamie. An average of 66 kilometers a week for ten weeks at 12 is the best I’ve seen from a swimmer of her age. An average of 58 kilometers by the other twelve year old, Catalina, is the second best I’ve seen. Whoever said young swimmers couldn’t swim these distances never saw these two girls. Part way through the build up Jamie’s Dad was officiating at a local swim meet. One of the officials from another club asked him how far his daughter swam each week. Jamie’s Dad said, “About 70 kilometers.” The official said that was clearly a mistake. No 12 year old could swim that sort of distance. Our incredulous friend probably does not read Swimwatch, but if he does, she sure as hell can.

On the final Saturday of each season’s build up I set the team a 600 meter time trial as a test of their aerobic conditioning. Obviously, after all that long distance training swimmers are in no shape to race fast. They should however be aerobically fit enough to swim 600 meters at a good pace with even 100 meter splits. I look for two things in this trial session. Has the overall time improved from the same swim last season and are the splits for each 100 even? The table below shows the total and split times for the last three 600 trials swum by three of the swimmers.

It may be of interest to see the result of a 600 meter breaststroke trial that I thought was pretty impressive. Jane swam it at the end of a 1000 kilometer build up and about twelve weeks before she won her first New Zealand national championship and broke her first New Zealand open record.

When it comes to distance conditioning, obviously I agree with Councilman and Lydiard. For those who may have doubts consider these factors:

In Jane’s 600 meter breaststroke trial she swam 2.38 for the first 200 meters and 2.39 for the last 200 meters. That’s a pretty good sign of sound, deep seated aerobic fitness.
A 12 year old female whose best race times before this build up were, 100 meters 1.12, 200 meters 2.35 and 400 meters 5.08 swam these distances during this 600 trial in 1.09, 2.25 and 4.57. That’s another pretty good sign of improved aerobic fitness.
Skuba swam his first trial a year ago after having three years away from the sport. Two more build ups and this trial was 3% faster. That too is a pretty good sign of improved aerobic fitness. Faster race times will certainly result.

As you can see, although the swims are aerobic they are not exactly slow. Lydiard is often credited with being the father of the “long slow distance method” of training. He was not. Just try and swim 600 meters in 6.30 or 600 meters breaststroke in 8.00 minutes after completing 1000km in ten weeks. These times are not slow. And yet, to well-conditioned swimmers, they are still aerobic efforts. To their anaerobically over-trained peers, swims such as these would be impossible aerobically and maybe anaerobically as well. In this principle lies the reason our runners can’t get anywhere near the African athletes. It’s called aerobic conditioning. You get it by long, fast aerobic effort over many, many miles. Hold on to that idea, it might make you a champion one day.

Bloomers and Black Stockings

2009-03-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

By David

On December 19, 2008 Swimwatch published a story called “Much Ado About Neoprene”. The article discussed the implications of a meeting FINA was scheduled to have with 16 swimwear manufacturers. The purpose of the meeting was to recommend amendments to the “FINA Requirements for Swimwear Approval”. Amendments, FINA thought, were needed to control the technology being applied to swimsuit manufacture. The recommendations would then be considered by the FINA Bureau at its March meeting in Dubai. That Bureau certainly does themselves well in the exotic locations department.

Arguably the suit that started it all, the Speedo LZR Racer

The meeting with the 16 manufacturers has been held. The recommendations have been published. Here is what the delegates in Dubai will consider.

Swimsuits shall not cover the cover the neck nor extend past the shoulder or ankles.
The material shall have a maximum thickness of 1mm; it will follow the body shape and shall not create air trapping effects.
The swimsuit shall not have a buoyancy effect of more than 1 Newton.
Any system of external stimulation is prohibited.
Swimsuits must not be modified for individual swimmers.
Swimmers can only wear one suit at a time.
FINA will establish a swimsuit control/testing program.

I have no idea whether these controls ensure swimsuits are fair and honest. They seem sensible, but then I don’t even know what one Newton means. There is a certain irony in the rule demanding suits do not cover a swimmer’s arms. It was not so long ago that the same organisation insisted girls cover those extremities. In the not-so-distant-past, this organisation would have had swimmers wearing men's shorts like this for the 100 butterfly, and women's bloomers along these lines for the 200 IM. This does not cheat former swimmers out of their achievements; it is simply the natural progression of the sport and its technology.

The recommendations conclude with a statement from FINA President, Mustapha Larfaoui that says, “While we need to remain open to evolution, the most important factors must be the athlete’s preparation and physical condition on achieving their performances.”

Larfaoui does not explain himself very well. Preparation and physical condition are just as much evolution as new swimsuits. However, if he means what I think he means, then he is quite right. Preparation and physical condition should be foremost in determining the quality of a swimming performance. If the seven recommendations coming out of Switzerland help ensure that is the case, then we can be well pleased. What I don’t understand is why the clearly stated efforts of some companies to push the technology envelope come in for such suspicion. Pushing technology is not necessarily cheating – it’s not even maybe cheating.

Take Rocket Science Sport for example. Their CEO is a guy called Marcin Sochacki. He’s quite open about his goals. Here’s what he says, “Our Company has pushed the edge of technology and perhaps designed a suit that is ahead of its time. The swimsuit complies with all the proposed regulations including buoyancy and thickness except for the length of the sleeve. I do not see this as a set back but proof that our company walks on the razor’s edge in pursuit of technology and innovation. We have a sleeveless version that we look forward to seeing on swimmers in Rome.”

I like that attitude. It’s the way progress is made. Equipment manufacturers do the same thing all the time. Anti-turbulence lane lines, the new Omega starting blocks, improved pool water flow characteristics, deeper pools – there are a million things that give 2009 swimmers a technological edge over their 1960 mates. Thanks to people like Marcin Sochacki, we make progress and that’s a good thing. A favourite hobby of mine is pouring over the US Swimming rule book searching for a rule that might give a clue on how to steal an advantage – not an illegitimate advantage, just an advantage. Upward fly kicks in a breaststroke kick, fly kicks after a turn, delayed breaststroke kicks, track starts and a dozen other innovations are all the result of someone being ahead of their time. So if Rocket Science Sport is trying to do the same thing for swimsuits that I’m trying to do in the pool, then all power to them. That’s not cheating; that’s just “the pursuit of technology and innovation.” It is change that should be welcomed and embraced.

Some dinosaurs, Craig Lord for example, see perils in just about every innovation. He even called the new swim suits “steroid swim suits”. He appears to go to some lengths to exclude Speedo and Arena from that label. I’ve never quite understood why. Why are the suits made by those companies any different? Did they take him to the Ritz for lunch or something? Fortunately Lord’s respect, and hopefully traffic, is declining faster than the New York Stock Exchange. I too hope Rocket Science has swimmers in Rome wearing their suits. I hope I have swimmers in London wearing them. That would certainly be better than some who wish is to see us all in bloomers and black stockings again.

Bad Karma

2009-02-22T06:54:00.000-08:00

By David

The best sporting news of the week – no wait – the best sporting news of 2009 was announced last week on the New Zealand website, Stuff. Here is what it said.

Shares in iconic Kiwi whiteware manufacturer Fisher & Paykel have been smashed to record low levels – losing as much as 40 percent in value.

You must be as delighted as I am to hear that news. Isn’t it fantastic? The whole house of cards is about to come crashing down on Chief Executive, John Bongard, and the gang of recreants that run his company. The details of it all make even better reading. Bongard has had to accept a 7.5% cut in his $1.14 million dollar pay. For some reason, his cohorts are losing only 5%. The good news just goes on and on. Debt has increased by $122 million since March 2008 to $512 million and is expected to reach $570 million by the end of March 2009. Shares closed at a record of only $1 last Friday. In the 10 months to January, sales were down 13.1 percent in New Zealand, 8.5 per cent in Australia, 12.9 percent in the US and 10 percent in Europe.

In the best traditions of sport Bongard described the conditions faced by his team as “unprecedented and difficult”. And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving subject. If there is such a thing as bad karma, Fisher & Paykel have got it in heaps and they deserve it all and probably more.

For those of you who have been climbing Mount Everest without oxygen or sailing alone around the world and have not heard of the circumstances that have brought such joy to the rest of the sporting world, let me explain. It all began in 2003 when New Zealander’s Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth elected to sail for the America’s Cup challenger Alinghi against the cup holder, Team New Zealand. Led by Fisher & Paykel, Team New Zealand’s supporters branded their crusade the “Loyal” campaign. Silver fern flags featuring the word “Loyal” proudly flew from polished steel flag poles outside Fisher & Paykel’s corporate headquarters. New Zealand musician Dave Dobbin rolled out his old hit, “Loyal”. The country was obsessed. The flags were mass produced. The song, despite being released in 1988, became a huge hit once more.

But there was a dark side to all this hysteria. Letters threatening physical harm were sent to Coutts and Butterworth. New Zealanders, led by Fisher & Paykel, began to act in a manner that was alarming and dark. My country became a place I barely recognized. This had nothing to do with sport. This was not the way Lydiard or Hillary or Meads or Walker or even Coutts and Butterworth played the game. This was about power and money and fear: it was shameful.

But not nearly as shameful as Fisher & Paykel’s next trick; there they were leading a tsunami of national sporting hysteria in New Zealand and at the same time it was announced in Sydney that they had negotiated a million dollar deal to sponsor swimming in Australia. There was nothing wrong with the Australian deal. It was probably very good business and certainly got their brand well known in that country. What was not right was the beating they were giving two New Zealand yachtsmen for selling their services to the Swiss America’s Cup campaign at the same time as they were selling the Fisher & Paykel brand to foreigners and supporting Australian swimmers instead of New Zealnders. That was hypocritical beyond belief. For some reason though, they avoided the harsh publicity they deserved. I’ve never bought a Fisher & Paykel appliance since then and I never will, but I guess they’re not too worried about that.

Trick two, however, was even more scandalous. The company began a programme of shifting its manufacturing out of New Zealand to low cost labor markets in Mexico and Thailand. Again, there was nothing inherently wrong with that decision that does not happen in business and manufacteuring across the world, and neither this blog nor this post is primarily concerned with debating capitalism. However, when they so prominently took the America’s Cup moral high ground, when they played such an active role in forcing two proud and talented New Zealand athletes to hire ex-SAS body guards, when they preached the importance of national loyalty in business and sport – to abandon their country after all that pious posturing was despicable.

What goes around comes around. Coutts and Butterworth have prospered and Fisher & Paykel is on the bones of its bum. In a way, Fisher & Paykel may have been right all along. Honour and integrity are important in sport and business. Only in this case, it was New Zealand’s two sailors who displayed those qualities. Karma – it’s perfect.

Michael Phelps' Drug Scandal - USA Swimming Does Well

2009-02-09T13:13:00.000-08:00

By David

Very few readers will have missed the news that USA Swimming have suspended Michael Phelps for three months and stopped his pay for the same length of time. Well done, you guys in Colorado; I'll admit I never thought you’d do it. I thought Phelps was untouchable: such a super star in your swimming universe that you’d mutter a few “bad boy, Michael”s and look the other way.

My skepticism was probably justified. Do you remember that shortly before the US Olympic Trials, USA Swimming’s Executive Director, Chuck Wielgus, said parents could happily get their children involved in swimming, knowing that in this sport there was none of the nasty drug misbehaving that went on in other sports. I can’t find the exact quote now but I think it included a reference to swimmers never getting involved in late night clubbing. It was always a dumb thing to say. Since Wielgus said it, Jessica Hardy has been caught with something performance enhancing in her system, Australian swimmer Nick D’Arcy has beaten up one of his mates outside an Australian nightclub and Michael Phelps’ Omega clad arm has been photographed clasping a bong.

I thought USA Swimming would continue with their rose colored glasses view of the sport; but they haven’t. Suspending Phelps and stopping his pay is an appropriate penalty. What Phelps did was dumb beyond belief. Given his status it was also a hugely bad example to young competitors in the sport. None of that means he should be punished more that anyone else. USA Swimming did the fair and proper thing.

Phelps’ apologies are beginning to wear a little thin. Several years ago – I think Phelps was seventeen – he was caught on a DUI charge. He quickly confessed and apologized. I was impressed. He was drinking underage and he was drunk in charge of a motor car, but he owned up, he took responsibility; it was time to move on. And now the bong. Sure, since the photograph he has followed the path that worked so well last time. He has apologized and publicly accepted USA Swimming’s reprimand. But at what point does the repetition of this behavior tell us Phelps is fast but he’s bad too? He must know that at the grass roots of swimming we are getting tired of explaining to thirty mini squad members why their hero is sucking on the end of a fancy looking glass tube. We’re making all sorts of excuses just now; citing words like mistakes and pressure. But keep doing it, Michael, and eventually we’re just going to say, it’s because you’re a bad bugger.

In that regard, USA Swimming’s decision has helped. Our message can now be, “Phelps did wrong and he’s been punished. That’s what happens if you do wrong.” I feel a lot better about that than the mistake and pressure routine.

Which is more that you can say for the clap-trap coming out of FINA’s posh office in Lucerne, Switzerland. They really gave it all the crocodile tears treatment; poor Michael he’s done so much for swimming, everyone makes mistakes, we want to see him swim really well at the World Championships later this year. Of course they began their piece with a “while we do not condone this sort of behavior” type message. The rest of it wasn’t even a slap with a wet bus ticket. You’d have thought Phelps had just won Mr. America. The guy was photographed at a party bubbling on a bong; FINA, that’s not a good thing. Are you sure there is not the sweet scent of something coming from your offices? Whoever came up with that public response should be fired for three months and made to swim across Lake Lucerne every day for no pay. Wake up, sober up take a look at what USA Swimming did and treat this sport with some respect.

So well done USA Swimming. Do much better next time FINA. And Phelps, for God’s sake, cut it out. Otherwise people are going to think you’ve been smoking too much of that stuff for far too long.

Swimming New Zealand, Email Spam and More Useless Exercise Idiocy

2009-01-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

By David

Small things fascinate small minds. If that’s so, the next seven hundred words are going to confirm the author’s pea brain. But I don’t care. I don’t care at all. Why? Because there are a few things in life that just piss me off.

Take Swimming New Zealand’s new habit of sending out mass emails. Their headings are always a rather breathless – Bell swims to Gold in Junior Pan Pacs Opener – and, if true, must make Swimming New Zealand the world’s most exciting and tiring location. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the emails. They keep an expat like me up-to-date with the goings-on down there. I certainly don’t want to be taken off their distribution list. But the law’s the law.

Since June 2003, the Can-Spam Act requires all commercial mass emails offer a facility to opt-out of a mailing by a single action, which usually entains clicking an unsubscribe link. This act is usually enforced outside of the United States by local agencies, such as in this case, which involved a spam operation based in New Zealand and Australia. Swimming New Zealand doesn’t comply with these anti-spam measures. There is no link, nor any instruction, about how to remove oneself from the mailing list. An organization that spent years disqualifying my swimmers for the most minor infringements should make sure their own house is in order.

The Swimming New Zealand author of the emails is Lisa Conroy, the Performance and Pathways Support Manager. What a title that is. SPARC was always going to make sure its member associations produced names like that.

But onto actually swimming related topics: Our pool in Florida has just hosted several college teams for their winter training camp. This year I noticed a huge increase in the range of equipment carried to the pool by each swimmer. Those infamous team vans will soon need to charge extra for overweight gear bags. The value of some of the stuff is a bit suspect.

Those snorkels for example; I’ve heard they are supposed to train swimmers to keep their heads still. And yet the snorkels used in the past two weeks at our pool were moving around all over the place. Every honest swimmer I’ve met acknowledges that the main benefit of a snorkel is avoiding the need to turn their head to breathe. In other words, it allows swimmers to cruise up and down without a care in the world, which is fine, but let's not pretend otherwise.

As long as breathing remains an important part of swimming in the Olympic final, I think I’ll keep my swimmers honing that skill and avoid snorkels. Like a lot of this sort of stuff, I suspect the main advantage of snorkels is convincing parents and swimmers that the coach is on top of the latest in swimming technology. Fortunately, the ASCA gives out their coaching qualifications based on how fast your swimmers swim, not by the size of their gear bag.

Then there are those small fins; the ones called Zoomers. They are swimming’s ultimate marketing dream. I’ve never understood their benefit; perhaps there isn’t any. If you want to kick with fins buy a decent sized pair of fins. If you want your kick to feel like no fins at all, wear nothing. There is no point in buying something that’s neither one nor the other. I know a number of triathletes who swim large portions of their training with Zoomers. Another name for that is cheating. Leave Zoomers on the store shelf. You’ll be doing your swimming and wallet a whole lot of good.

Pull buoys must be swimming’s biggest equipment con. Why on earth would anyone buy a piece of equipment that does something for you that you should be doing for yourself? Keeping your hips high is important to good swimming speed. Relying on a block of polystyrene to do it for you is called being lazy. “But,” I hear some say, “what say you don’t want to kick?” Then tie your ankles together and don’t kick but don’t indulge in a swimming nap by using pull buoy.

Hand paddles, proper size fins, a kick board and a swimming bungee cord; that’s about all the equipment you need. Much more than that and (to quote Jane’s last Swimwatch post), “you’re not an athlete, you’re just a douchebag.” You are relying on the cost of your gear bag for status. Let me remind athletes and sports participants of all levels that the amount you spend on your equipment is not equal to how good you are at using it.

Just remember this; many Kenyan and Moroccan runners don’t even own a pair of shoes. Sure as hell, they can beat the pants off most of our runners. Want to know their secret formula? Let me bring you in on the secret. They do a whole lot of running. That principle works best in swimming too.

I Quit: An Updated Guide To Swimming Retirement

2009-01-11T19:23:00.000-08:00

By Jane

I pride myself on quitting both when I'm ahead and at the right time, and I quit swimming on March 18, 2006. I've written one post already about how I stayed fit post-swimming (and I'm down to size 1 and 2 jeans now, thanks for asking), but two years after I began running and almost three years after I last set foot on a starting block, I have a new outlook on maintaining a functional life, post-elite athletics.

Hello, random reader. You think this is overly dramatic and out of touch. "Maintaining a functional life, post-elite athletics?" How hard is it? You quit and you move on. Show up at the YMCA every Sunday and knock out a few 100s and pretend you're still being given new Fastskins. (LZRs. Sorry. I am showing my age.) Hello, former competitive swimmer. You guys know what I mean.

The last day of my swimming career in Athens, Georgia

Random readers: don't judge us for this. This sport consumed many of us for over a decade. We'd work studiously at it for three hours every morning and two hours every night. Once we left it, we had things to overcome. Swimming gave me some of the best moments of my life (but my no means all of them). The elation of my two best swims ever (December 2, 2001 and November 20, 2005) are only diminished by the fact that only one of them was caught on film. I didn't have to look up those dates, either. Very little compares to swimming as fast as you can and feeling like you can swim ever faster.

Getting used to a life without that is tricky, and I was lucky in that I found something else I loved to do. However, I still have to remind myself of some things relatively often. I suggest you do the same:

My former competitors no longer matter. To me.

People I used to compete against have swum faster than I ever did in the two and a half years I've not been swimming. The longer I spend away from the sport, the more I understand that this doesn't matter to me. Not only that, but the faster they swim, the more I recognise that their success means nothing to what I achieved. I can now be pleased for them. They went through as much pain and misery and hope and shit as I did.
I'll never shake my swimmer's roots.

Most people who run like to mix up their circuits. They like to take alternative roads. Running the same routes every day bores them. Whilst I can't speak for all swimmers, this isn't true for me. I run the same route every day. I know exactly where I am and, better still, I know how good or bad I'm feeling by how I feel at any given part of my run. I enjoy the consistency I learned by staring at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Swimming teaches you an appreciation for the routines that other people call boredom. I think of them as the time I get to spend with myself, where I know exactly what should happen and where there are no surprises. This, undoubtedly, contributes to my unparalleled road rage when a cyclist runs a red light at one of my intersections. If you're a cyclist, RED LIGHTS APPLY TO YOU, TOO. I enjoy pointing this out to you when you forget it.
There is no point in resenting That Coach who committed That Crime.

This said, I'm going to tell a story about a coach's crime that pissed me off. It still does. I'm aware that there is no point in resenting it, and I'm trying not to. I'm not doing well.

I swam badly at training camp, and at subsequent competitions, in the winter of 2005. Of course, by "badly", I mean that I swam 14 seconds slower than my best time in the 200 breaststroke, and ended up in tears at the end of the UC Irvine Invitational. We'd driven from training camp in San Diego that morning. It was Fuck I'm Cold degrees Fahrenheit and I'll never listen to Jesus of Suburbia without being in that van, content in the fact that at least we would be leaving Southern California that afternoon. My whole body had seized up and I could barely walk, let alone swim. I'd never been thinner, angrier, colder or more tired. My overriding memory of the week before my twenty-first birthday was of being freezing cold. The only thing I could do reasonably well was long aerobic work, such as 6 x 800m sets. I ate those up. Anything shorter and faster was beyond me.

This does not look like Hell. It was.

Later that year, I took a (previously approved) week away from my college town in between finishing my final exams and beginning a session of summer school. Upon returning, my coach was not pleased with me. The main problem, apparently, was that during the eight days I'd not been in town, the coaching staff had "had no idea where I was, nor if I was training." Seriously: where the hell did they think I was? There were three options: at my boyfriend's house (an hour away), in the Virgin Islands with my parents or in New Zealand. No bloody prizes for guessing that one correctly.

Not only that, but when we began discussing specifics of my week's absense, my poor performance at training camp that January was put down to my "not training over the Christmas break." When I had. A lot. A lot. This hurt me badly. During my time as a swimmer, I'd be similarly accused of faking injuries to avoid certain parts of workouts. It killed me. All you can do when faced with accusations like that is violently object, which only makes you sound guiltier. It simply wasn't true.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. Some coach's idea as to how hard of a worker I was doesn't reflect on how honest or hard working I actually was. I am still figuring this out for myself, but it's really important to let go of those perceived coaching injustices. When I finally do (I did work out! I did I did I did I did!) I'll be proud of myself.
No, really. We do have to work out.

As previously mentioned, I took up running to keep fit. You must exercise after you stop swimming. Every swimmer I've ever known who has thought they'll effortlessly keep their physique post-athletics has put on a lot of weight. Not only that, but they get thick. They don't lose their muscle mass, but fat piles up on top of it. It's probably a worse look that regular fat. The worst examples turn into human brick walls. Avoiding this is pretty easy, pending genetics: stop eating as much and start doing something that burns calories on a regular basis. That LZR-ready body won't last long if you don't.
We should ignore the self-appointed experts.

For the rest of my life, I'll come across people who think they know more about sport than I do. This is primarily because I don't exude sportiness. I find breakfast cereal to be a luxury worth giving up, but pricey vodka and Bumble and Bumble shampoo unavoidable necessities. Nope, that isn't an affiliate link: I just like their stuff a lot. But if you're interested, Bumble, I'm here.

However, this makes people think that I don't know anything about sport. Someone who hasn't worn a flat-heeled shoe while they're not running since 2005 doesn't get much respect from the Lyrca-clad, triathlon brigade. They'll tell me about their training. They'll tell me about their doctors and their injuries. They'll tell other people about their races and I'll overhear them. They're forever running to an appointment of some sort so that they can be better athletes. They know a lot about diets.

Hi! When your gym and trainer are in a building that looks like this, you're not an athlete, you're just a douchebag!

The night before I broke my New Zealand record, I ate my Mum's pasta bake (asparagus and bacon... Jesus, it's heaven. And I don't even like bacon) and a gi-fucking-normous bowl of strawberry icecream and chocolate sauce. I may have also gotten drunk. It's highly likely. However, I swam faster than any Kiwi female ever had for 200m breaststroke and that record stood for three years. Kelly Bentley, you broke my heart when you swam 2:29 but I've got a lot of respect for ya ;)

You don't need to be a qualified dietician or employ a personal trainer at a Seattle health club to be a good athlete, but you don't have to listen to the people who do believe that this is necessary. Smile nicely. Go for a run while they visit their orthopedic surgeon. Buy them a chai tea.
The things we liked while we competed will change.

I always liked morning training while I swam, but I hated getting up in the morning. Make sense? No? I always swam well in the mornings, but the act of getting out of bed at 5am was torturous. Now, I like getting up that early and I imagine the primary reason is that I don't have to. I like a lot of things now that I didn't like when I was an athlete, and dislike a few things I used to enjoy as well. When I no longer had those immense stresses in my life, my perspective and demeanour changed. Retired swimmers should be aware that they'll change mentally as well as physically.

I don't write very often for Swimwatch, the main reason being that I don't compete or train anymore. However, I believe that dealing with being "retired" (is it obvious that I hate that word? I find it pompous) is nearly as important as coping with being an active participant.

My ninety-percent-positive experience with sport was only heightened by my philosophy on quitting: don't get fat, resent nothing (working on that) and get out while you're still winning.

Uneasy Lies The Coaching Head

2009-01-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

By David

Every now and then, coaches in every sport come in for criticism. I imagine the coach of the Dallas Cowboys is finding life a bit uncomfortable this week. Swimming is no exception. In my time as a coach I have noticed that those who are unhappy with my coaching tend to use a standard list of complaints. The list is the same the world over and is often used without regard for merit or fact. Here is a list of the most common swimming complaints every swim coach experiences at one time or another – and on some memorable occasions, all at the same time.

The Coach spends all his time with the team’s senior swimmers
The Coach’s methods are old hat and out of date
The Coach is disrespectful to female swimmers
The Coach yells too much

The balance of this article will consider each of these issues and present the philosophy I have followed in relation to the complaints.

THE COACH’S METHODS ARE OLD HAT AND OUT OF DATE – The formula for Coke is old. I doubt that means it should be changed. The race preparation I use is based on two Lydiard principles that are different from the training used in many other swim teams.

Each stage of training is kept separate – what this means is that separate periods of time are set aside for aerobic training, anaerobic training and speed training. Most other plans differ in the lengths of time they allocate to developing each quality and the majority of coaches use shorter and repeated phases called micro-cycles, whereas Lydiard developed each quality separately over an extended period. Micro-cycle coaches divide their programs differently, with many including elements of build-up, anaerobic and speed training in their daily schedules.

Micro-cycle supporters claim their programs are better; that by exercising a specific quality frequently and then leaving it alone for an equally short period before coming back to it, the quality will be better developed. At best, the argument is simplistic; at worst, it is wrong. It fails to recognise that the different physiological characteristics the swimmer is trying to develop progress at diverse speeds. For example aerobic conditioning develops differently and at a different pace to anaerobic fitness or speed. Lydiard’s single-cycle approach recognizes this and exercises each phase fully for a specific period of time before moving on to the next phase.

Our schedule of 10, 4 and 10 weeks for the three main phases has not been arrived at by chance. Each recognizes proven physiological characteristics of the quality being developed. Working for lesser times will not develop that quality to the same extent and will not produce the same improvement.
The program is based on Distance Conditioning – Since the Beijing Olympic Games it has been revealed that much of Phelps’ and Lochte’s preparation was spent swimming between 90 and 100 kilometers per week. To be included with this “out of date” group is something we can live with. Far from being “old hat” the trend world wide is towards swimming greater distances. While that idea may not have caught on yet in all local swim groups it certainly is true of the swimmers responsible for over 100 world records broken during 2008.

In 2008 the Aqua Crest Board approved and assisted the team’s coach (me) travel to Europe twice, China once and the US National Championships twice. One of the prime objectives of these trips was to search out and determine new methods of swimming and training being used around the world. In the case of our loyalty to a Lydiard program the suggestion of “old hat” is without substance – “a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

THE COACH SPENDS ALL HIS TIME WITH THE TEAM’S SENIOR SWIMMERS – This is a favourite barb of the disgruntled. That should not surprise anyone. It is one of the few things the dissatisfied can say that will always be true. Did Phelps’ coach spend more time coaching Phelps prior to Beijing than he spent coaching the Baltimore Chocolate Fish squad? Yes, of course he did. Does that mean Bob Bowman is a bad coach, guilty of neglecting his young swimmers? No of course it doesn’t.

It means Bowman and other successful senior coaches recognise the commitment required to win open events in the World and the United States. It means Bowman and other successful senior coaches respond to the commitment of their senior swimmers with an equal commitment of their own. That is only fair. Those who swim for thirty hours each week and lift weights for another three deserve no less.

It is difficult to understand what the critics want. Do they want the team’s senior swimmers coached less? Do they want senior swimmers to lose? Do they think senior swimmers don’t need as much training – because they are good, senior swimmers don’t need to practice as much? Possibly they think the juniors should practice more. If the Head Coach is spending too much time coaching senior swimmers, he must be spending not enough time on the juniors.

The critics are full of contradictions. They say seniors get too much attention but are quite happy to bask in the reflected glory of their successes. They want to see more attention paid to the juniors but are first in line to jump all over any coach who pushes the team’s juniors. They complain about the time spent coaching the team’s seniors but are quick to point to the success of other team’s seniors as a sign of a successful club.

Some people are hard to please. I think our team has the balance about right. Swimming is a notoriously over-coached sport. Senior swimmers should be able to do large potions of their training on their own. Junior swimmers do need more supervision. Everyday I take our team’s junior squad for their stroke correction drills. In a swimmer’s early career teaching good technique is very important. It is only right that juniors get fifteen or twenty minutes of the Head Coach’s attention each day for this portion of their training. With the exception of the most zealous critic this characteristic of our program should negate any suggestion of senior bias.

THE COACH IS DISRESPECTFUL TO FEMALE SWIMMERS – Playing the sex card is a sure fire way of gaining attention. The real problem is that critics making accusations of gender bias are seldom called upon to verify their claims and worse they tend to be believed. In that environment the irresponsible can roam free, instigating whatever damage they like.

Until recently most of the best athletes I have coached have been female. These women influenced my attitude to their sport. In my first book on swimming I included this description: “Athletes are capable of only what they are capable of, irrespective of their sex, which is a non-relevant variable.

The average female athlete may be capable of greater work-loads than the average male; everyone knows the stories of women who live longer than men when lost at sea in lifeboats. They have greater physiological reserves which might enable them to train longer and harder; say, 120km a week when the average international male can do 100km. But the point is that all this theorising is pointless. Each athlete has to be taken as an individual, not because they are male or female, but because they are individuals.

The moment you say, “She can’t do as much because she’s a female”, you join the ranks of coaches and administrators who used to say women could not run 800 meters without physiological damage. I have no difficulty believing that, at some future Olympics, a woman will win an open 400 meters freestyle. It will happen. How soon depends primarily on how successful coaches and athletes are in ignoring gender as a training or competition variable.”

Some may call this disrespectful. Certainly women who enjoy their “little women” status may not like it. They want their gender to be a training variable. It makes life easier. But the best female athletes do not hide behind their gender. They stand as strong, independent people and athletes. And that’s how they should be treated. [Editor's note: Boys are lazy. - J ;) ]

THE COACH YELLS TOO MUCH – I yell at someone about something once every month or so. If that’s too much then the verdict is, “Guilty as charged.” Before passing sentence, however, the problem is a common one. Bill Parcells, and he’s a pretty bloody good coach, says, “Something goes wrong, I yell at them. You can only really yell at players you trust.”

There are a million experts who will tell you that any yell is a yell too many. They are sport’s version of the parents who never smack their children – bleeding heart liberals [Editor's note: Oi! Um... can I be a liberal and still see nothing wrong with a slap on the wrist or a bit of coach-yelling? - J]. Used sparingly and only when justified the occasional yell does no harm at all. If it is deserved, no swimmer I’ve met holds a grudge. They know when they’ve overstepped the mark. All that’s not very PC, some may even call it “old hat” but it works.

Their Bests

2008-12-26T17:26:00.000-08:00

By David

Most good athletes provide their coaches with a host of special memories. It is also not unusual for one event in an athlete’s career to stand out above the rest.

In Alison’s running career, her victory in the UK indoor 1500 meter track championship is most memorable. Her 1978 1000 meters in Berlin is still the New Zealand record for that event. Her Commonwealth 1500 meter run so soon after suffering a serious pulmonary embolism was a special occasion. Her surprising wins in two Scottish cross-country championships and fifth place in the Montreal Worlds were also important. But as a complete demonstration of all that was good about Alison’s running, the Cosford UK Championship stands out.

The Cosford indoor track was not the most propitious location. At the time it was the UK’s only indoor track. A fast tartan and wood 200 meter circuit built in an old Royal Air Force aircraft hanger. Alison’s light, bouncing stride was well suited to the track’s pliant surface and tight bends. I didn’t think she had any chance of winning the race. All Britain’s best 1500 meter runners were there; the stamina types who loved a fast pace and the sprinters who looked forward to using their speed at the finish. Whatever the tactics, Alison was going to be out run – or at least that’s what I thought. Alison sat comfortably in second and third through the early laps. With 600 meters to go the pace lifted as the runners prepared for their run to the finish. Alison looked fine but Colbrook and Dainty were just behind her and were noted international fast finishers. With 200 meters left I noticed Alison move into lane two. And then she was gone. In 100 meters she opened a ten meter gap on the field and strode easily to the finish. It was a rout. The 300 mile trip back home to Scotland was a happy occasion.

Toni had her fair share of good races. She was third in both the World Short Course Finals and the Pan Pacific Games. She swam in the Barcelona Olympic Games and won the Oceania Championships. For me, however, her best race was a 100 meters freestyle she swam at the 1990 New Zealand Commonwealth Games trials. She had only joined our team six months earlier and at the time was not a serious contender for the Game’s team. In fact we already had Michelle Burke, New Zealand’s fastest sprinter, on our squad. However, as the trials drew closer I noticed Toni getting nearer to Michelle’s training times. It seemed it would be just a matter of time before Toni became New Zealand’s fastest swimmer. Before the Trials 100 meter final the TVNZ broadcaster, Keith Quinn, called to find out what I thought Michelle’s winning time would be. I told him Michelle would be second. The race would be won by Toni. He said I was the only person in New Zealand who thought that would be the result. Fifty six seconds later Toni was the new national champion. She had won the race with a terrific sprint after the turn, in the third 25 meters. I think it was the elements of surprising the New Zealand swimming community and Toni’s clinical execution of her race plan that make this race special. I was certain she would go on to have a successful international career. Keith Quinn rang me minutes after the race to say he too had become a believer.

Nichola won New Zealand open titles, Australian age group titles and New South Wales open and age group titles but the race I remember most was one she lost, at the 1995 New Zealand nationals in Hamilton. The day before, Nichola, Toni Jeffs and I were driving to training when a utility truck pulled out of a side road in front of us. We hit it at 100kmh. Toni went to hospital with a partially crushed vertebrae, I felt as if a herd of elephants had tramped over me and I know Nichola felt the same. We could hardly move.

Nichola’s 50-metre race was important. It offered the prospect of her first open title and selection for her first national team. She had bettered the Pan-Pacific Games qualifying time two weeks earlier but the selectors said she must qualify again in Hamilton or miss selection

Although I knew Nichola felt terrible, she would not hear of the suggestion that she should withdraw from the event. Discussing the final, we determined that to win meant beating Alison Fitch and Sarah Catherwood, who were seeded in the lanes beside Nichola. On the way to the pool, I told her, “Don’t worry about the time, just beat Alison and Sarah and you’ll win the race.” I could see and feel her gearing up for that one task.

She swam amazingly well. She beat Alison and Sarah but she was still second -- away out in lane one, Melissa Bishop swam the race of her life. She had never swum as fast before, she has not swum as fast since. The injustice of it all was overwhelming; not because Melissa won -- she deserved to -- but Nichola had done more than anyone had a right to ask of her. She had delivered on what she was told to do but a freak circumstance robbed her of the tangible reward.

Nichola’s reaction was revealing. I expected enormous and justified frustration. A flood of tears and recrimination would have been excusable. Those of us who knew her best saw the hurt in her face but there was no complaint, no expression of injustice. Whatever she does, she will never display better character or more courage than she showed that night, in the way she swam and in her dignity and control when she learnt that what she had been told would be enough was, freakishly, still short of the mark. A top person.

Jane too had her share of memorable races. Her New Zealand IM record in Berlin was unexpected. Her 2.14 win in the Minneapolis 200 yards breaststroke to qualify for the NCAA finals inducted her into the small group of New Zealanders who have swum in that prestigious event. Her first NZ National Championship win in Rotorua was very special as was her 2.30 New Zealand record in the 200 meters breaststroke in the tiny New Zealand town of Waipukurau. But the swim I remember most wasn’t even a race. When Jane was three years old I used to take her swimming most days. Much of her time was spent riding the Moana Pool’s huge hydo-slide. I would tell her stories of my swimming days; of when I got my 800 meters certificate when I was only four years old – all those patriarchal tales. Some of it must have registered. On the way to the pool one Saturday morning three year old Jane said, “Can I swim 800 meters this morning?” Now, I must tell you that every Saturday morning New Zealand’s best swim coach, Duncan Lang, converted Dunedin’s Moana Pool to 50 meters. It seemed to me 16x50 meter lengths might be a bit much for a three year old. But I said, “If you must.”

An hour or so later she finished the 800 meters, 16 lengths, without a stop. Duncan had taken time out from training Danyon Loader to watch Jane’s swim. Anyone who has met Duncan knows he was never one to exaggerate. On this occasion however he muttered an extravagant, “That’s very good.” Years later Jane was on several New Zealand teams coached by Duncan Laing. Each time they met at the airport, Duncan would begin the conversation with, “G’dday blondie. Do you remember that time you swam 800 meters when you were three?” He hadn't not forgotten and neither have I. I wonder if Jane remembers?

Much Ado About Neoprene

2008-12-19T17:37:00.000-08:00

By David

This week I received an email from the American Swim Coaches Association. It copied an article, written by Craig Lord, discussing the dangers of swim suit development. Actually that’s not true. The article doesn’t discuss anything. It’s a genuine Craig Lord rant. You may not be aware of this but Craig Lord can out-rant anyone on any subject. This time his focus is the development of “LZR-type” swimsuits. According to Lord we have just entered the era of steroid-suits. A time when the suits swimmers wear will determine their success. Bubble wrapped zombies will soon be able to beat us all.

Lord’s indulgence is classic Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. I’m told that phrase “is often used today in reference to persistent engagement in a futile activity or attacking imaginary enemies. At one point in the novel, Don Quixote fights windmills that he imagines to be giants. Quixote sees the windmill blades as the giant's arms”. Lord too sees windmill blades as giant arms. Only in his case they’re wrapped in Neoprene.

For some reason Lord tries to exclude Arena and Speedo from the nasty group of swim suit manufacturers. Their suits “enhance performance” but it seems in a good way compared to other manufacturers. The really bad windmill is a guy called Marcin Sochacki, the CEO of Rocket Science Sports. Quite why Speedo’s version of “enhanced performance” should be more acceptable than Marcin Sochacki’s I have no idea. Lord does not provide us with that insight.

Apart from trying to panic us all into an assault on his windmills with giant arms, I think Lord’s point is that at a meeting to be held in late February between FINA and 21 swimsuit manufacturers, FINA had better make sure a set of standards is agreed upon that prevents swimsuit manufacturers taking their slippery, buoyancy developments too far. That seems to be a fair enough goal. FINA should prevent suits inflating or wing-foils deploying at speeds above 1.5 meters per second.

But there is not sufficient evidence to support Lord’s view that wearing some suit “is no different than knowingly popping steroids.” That is way, way over the top. It is the feature of the Lord article that generates the most disgust. His position diminishes the fine feats of modern athletes. What else do these two paragraphs mean?

As we approach the last big week of international swimming this year, we know that 91 world records have fallen, 54 of them long-course. Was the status of Gross, Darnyi, Dolan, Biondi, Jaeger, Evans, O'Neill, Meagher, Perkins, Morales etc not enhanced because their achievements were considered as extraordinary and not just one of 100 such swims in one year? Add up every world l/c record broken in Olympic years 1980 to 1996 and you get to 93 (including some swims we now know to have been driven by steroids and other performance-enhancing substances). Gosh, how boring it all must have been. Hold on - no it wasn't. It was fabulous. Swimming and breaking world records can be fabulous again.”

Modern suit manufacturers “lead the sport of swimming further down the slippery slope of shattered contracts, loss of faith, divorce, descent and on towards the bottomless pit of the doping suit.” They sweep “some swimmers past rivals who under other circumstances would still be out in front.

For Mr. Lords benefit, let me explain what’s wrong with all that emotive claptrap. I have been privileged this winter to sit and watch the three European World Cup Meets in Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin. In the process, seven or eight world records were broken. They were all fabulous. The underwater work of Bal’s 50 backstroke, the tough determination of Marieke Guehrer in the Berlin 50 butterfly, the lightning speed of Therese Alshammar in the same event in Stockholm, the pace and strength of Paul Biedermann in the 200 freestyle, the wonderful rhythm and tempo of Cameron Van Der Burgh’s breaststroke and the sophistication of Peter Marshall’s 100 backstroke; all a feast of high class swimming. It is abhorrent to see these athletes compared to Evans and Biondi and in some way portrayed as inferior. Lord has no right to do that. It devalues both generations, but not quite as much as it devalues Lord.

I wonder which World Records Lord considers diminished most? Which ones are not worthy of the title World Record? If you make the accusation Mr. Lord, please have the guts to provide the examples. Or is it Phelps’ Olympic record that’s stained because he wore a Speedo LZR? Perhaps Lochte’s World Record was the result of his suit and had nothing to do with the thousands of kilometers set by his father in Daytona Beach. Perhaps Oussama Mellouli only beat Grant Hackett because of his superior suit. Lord is just a bloody joke.

I was in Atlanta recently with a swimmer competing in his first US National Short Course Championship. During the week Skuba improved his short course 50 yards freestyle by 0.47 seconds and his long course 100 meters freestyle by 1.34 seconds. He wore a Speedo LZR suit in both races. But how dare Lord or anyone else suggest the suit produced the result. Not when I’ve sat and watched Skuba swim 100 kilometers a week; week after week. Not when his Atlanta results were obvious in training a week before we left for the meet. Skuba’s work and talent produced his Atlanta result, not a swim suit. And that’s true too of Phelps, Alshammar, Lochte, Marshall and all the rest.

Swimwatch wishes the February FINA meeting well. However, we do it without diminishing the World Records achieved in 2008 by hard working and deserving athletes.

Altanta: 1996 and 2008

2008-12-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

By David

Some of the world’s great pools are those built for an Olympic Games. I’ve coached swimmers who have competed in the Olympic pools in Paris, Moscow, Barcelona, Sydney, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rome and Atlanta. Toni Jeffs and Michelle Burke competed for New Zealand in the old Olympic Pool in Melbourne Australia, but I don’t know whether it was the pool used for the 1956 Games.

The pools are all mammoth structures. As well as their size, each one leaves you with an impression of how time has treated them since they were the center of the world’s attention. The pool in Paris, built for the 1924 Games, is the oldest and has the most character. It is located just off the inner ring road that runs around Paris and is a lovely blend of modern and historic . It home is the perfect town for such a union. One of history’s great Olympians, the American Johnny Weissmuller, won the Olympic 100m and 400m there. Weissmuller would later star as Tarzan in the movies and became one of Hollywood’s biggest names. The Paris pool, officially named Piscine Georges Vallerey, has been modernised but preserves the traditions of its history. Today it is 50m, and is divided most of the time by a moveable 25m boom. The water is deep and the pool has a fast reputation. All in all, it’s a lovely place to go swim. Its most amazing feature is that it is built on the third floor. The offices of Sport France and the French Swimming Federation are located under the pool. The punch line has something to do with a drill.

The pool in Rome has fantastic character. It’s one of Jane’s favourites. She wrote a good description of the pool in a recent Swimwatch article that listed her favourite swimming pools.

The biggest pool, bigger even than Sydney, is the pool in Moscow. It is huge. With the exception of the Olympic Games, it is also the site of the biggest crowds I’ve seen at a swim meet. At this year’s World Cup meet the massive stands were packed.

The Mexico City pool is in most need of some tender care. It was built for the 1968 Games and has been sadly neglected. I was there as coach of the Virgin Island‘s swim team. I managed to get one of the swimmers reinstated after he had been disqualified for a dodgy breaststroke turn. The disqualification slip was so badly prepared the officials had no option but to allow the protest. The meet referee was incensed. At the end of the protest meeting he stood up and yelled, “If you were a lawyer, you’re the sort who would get rapists off on a technicality.” Even if you belong to the conservative heartland that believes a badly performed breaststroke turn should be severely punished, I doubt you would put it into the same category as rape. Some of these guys take themselves far too seriously.

The all time acme performance by a New Zealand swimmer occurred in the Georgia Tech Swimming Pool in Atlanta. In 1996, Danyon Loader won the Olympic Games men’s 200 and 400 freestyle there. I was there for the first time last week at the United States Short Course National Championships. It’s a lovely pool and has been well looked after in the years since Danyon swam there. There is none of that awful chlorine stench that plagues some indoor pools. It’s kept at a comfortable temperature. There’s a nice café, an impressive scoreboard and a huge, well equipped weight room. My next comment may be a touch personal but for the life of me I cannot understand why such a well designed facility only has one urinal in the male swimmer’s locker room. I’ve never seen as many guys leaning on a wall waiting to have a pee.

The meet was well run; comfortably up to the standard of the other four United States Nationals I’ve attended. There were all the things we’ve come to expect at US Nationals; a well stocked athlete’s lounge, coach’s hospitality and rapid and easy access to heat sheets and results.

The officials were friendly. I got at least a dozen “welcome to Atlanta” and several “good luck” greetings. The pool was divided to allow women’s and men’s preliminaries to be swum at the same time. That avoided those endless sessions of heats that must rank as one of the worst aspects of this sport. Facilities that hold National Championships from now on should supply those new Omega starting blocks that were used in this year’s Sweden World Cup. I suspect the new blocks will soon be standard issue at international meets and US swimmers, at this level, should get used to using them. I had only one complaint. There was a dreadful cue of spectators waiting to purchase tickets for the finals. It was not the seller’s fault. Whoever designed the system she was expected to use needs to come up with something better. Certainly, it’s not right to charge people full price when it’s a tardy system that results in people standing waiting for a ticket while the races they’ve come to see have been underway for quarter of an hour. US Swimming will not fill their stadium with a Moscow size crowd that way.

Our team had two swimmers qualify for the meet but only Skuba traveled to Atlanta. He swam four races and recorded four personal best times. His 50 yards free improved by 0.47 seconds from 21.32 to 20.85 and his 100 meters free improved by 1.34 seconds from 53.73 to 52.39. After three years off, Skuba has been back in training for less than a year and is doing very well. It is good to see someone respond to the stimulus of a US Nationals in such a positive and successful way. Atlanta is a bloody nice place to do it as well – just ask Danyon Loader.

A Sad Story

2008-12-06T19:14:00.000-08:00

By David

Flying airplanes has long been a passion of mine. On a clear day, flying in New Zealand is a privilege. It is true: there is nowhere else on earth quite like it. New Zealand does not have the domestic order of England’s southern counties or the endless expanse of the Australian outback or even the manufactured theme park quality of Florida’s south east coast. There is a youthful fresh variety about this place. Human toil has tempered but not tamed the enthusiasm of nature here.

In an hour and twenty minutes after leaving Auckland’s airport I'll have flown over the populated rush of the nation’s largest city, out over impossibly green dairy fields and passed New Zealand’s longest river’s troubled exit into the Tasman Sea. There, brown river silt stains the white tipped blue of the southern ocean. Further south the triple cones of the central North Island’s mountains still hold on to small pockets of winter snow. Even here, in this most barren central plateau, the scene is awash with color. Light brown tussock, grey rock, a dark emerald canopy of native bush and smudged into the hillsides are purples, whites and reds of thriving imported heather. Approaching the Ohura beacon, the scene changes again to the gorges and ridges of the Parapara Ranges; a place of harshness and angles; an undisciplined jumble of busy streams, steep hills and narrow valleys. As far as I can tell there is not a flat paddock anywhere. This is the last place on earth you’d want to try a forced landing.

“Auckland Radar, this is Echo Kilo Romeo, overhead Ohura Beacon, 8500 feet; transferring to Ohakea radar 130 decimal 6.”

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo. Have a good day.”

“Ohakea Radar this is Echo Kilo Romeo overhead Ohura Beacon 8500 feet. Flight plan to Wellington and Christchurch, one POB”

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo”, says a lovely soft Scottish accent.” We have you on Radar at 8500 feet.”

Straight on to Paraparaumu and then the decent across Wellington Harbor to the airport. It is a most diverse view. Around the harbor, steep hills disguise the sea’s exit to the ocean. Away from the city, the hills are the uniform green of their bush and scrub cover. Nearer the city, the green refracts into a multitude of blues, reds and browns of suburban houses before the colors refocus again, this time into the grey of the city’s glass and steel office blocks.

Canet en Roussillon has long been a favorite town of mine. Toni Jeffs and I spent three weeks there preparing for the Barcelona Olympic Games. I’ve been back three times since with swimmers competing in the Canet leg of the Mare Nostrum series. It is one of this world’s truly lovely places. It is a small Mediterranean coastal village, close to Perpignan and the Spanish border. Little restaurants sell fantastic French food along a wide sandy beach. It’s just so incredibly French. Old men play boules and smoke pipes and talk about how bad things are in Paris. Young women swim with far too little on for sensitive eyes. Best of all it’s not on the foreign tourist trail. It’s more a place where the French go to holiday.

The pool is 50 meters, open air and has all the facilities – good lane lines, flags, a well equipped gym, electronic timing, good blocks at both ends, eight lanes and massage. It’s all there. A first class, air conditioned hotel is right across the road. But if you don’t like modern, one hundred and fifty meters away is a lovely old, small French castle called the Clos des Pins. Their restaurant has a huge brick, wood fired oven that produces food that is to die for. Order anything on their menu and you are in for a wonderful dining experience. If I was ever organizing a training camp before a major Games in Europe, I’d go back to Canet. But, I hear you say, “What say it’s a long way from the meet?” Who cares?

The town of Canet and New Zealand aviation were sadly brought together this week. An Air New Zealand Airbus 320 had just completed maintenance and repainting work at Perpignon Airport. Prior to returning to New Zealand two German pilots, four New Zealand engineers and a New Zealand pilot took the plane up for an hour long check flight. Five kilometers off the Canet beach, on their approach back to Perpingon, the Airbus plunged into the sea. There were no survivors.

This summer Skuba, Andrew and I will be back in Canet for their International Swim Meet. For this New Zealander the visit will be that bit more important; remembering five of my countrymen who died, flying aeroplanes in this lovely part of the world.

Far Foreign Places

2008-11-21T20:13:00.000-08:00

By David

One of the most enjoyable aspects of FINA World Cup competition is the involvement of so many diverse and interesting nationalities. Watching their different personalities is at times serious, funny, sad, educational and always entertaining. This year’s World Cup was no exception. Here is what I mean.

Great Britain

Unfortunately, the Brits are not what they used to be. In days gone by they were the party team to end all party teams; a group packed with exciting and rebellious individuals. You can probably imagine the chaos after midnight by the likes of Foster, Hickman, Fibbens and Meadows. They might not have won all the races they should, although they didn’t do too badly on the world stage, but they did it in the best possible British tradition of not taking this winning and losing business too seriously. They had style. Things are a bit different now. Sweetenham inspired mass stretching sessions and endless team talks stressing the importance of “lights out” and exemplary behaviour. This year’s British team had about fifteen swimmers, coached by an impressive--and I would imagine expensive--gang of six coaches. That ratio and Sweetenham’s legacy is guaranteed to produce a personality void. However, all may not be lost. On the bus taking us to Berlin airport, I was surrounded by British swimmers discussing the merits of “custard tarts with jam”. The standard of British humor was at its best. One day soon teams from the UK may be British again.

Australia – You want to see dull? Take a look at the bloody Australians. On the last day of the World Cup as most of the rest of the world headed home, some nursing varying degrees of hangover, the Australians were out of bed early and off to training. Now, I’m a training fanatic. I love the sound of 100 kilometers a week, of 12,000 meter sessions and 30x200 sets. But please: give me a break. The end of the World Cup is the end of the World Cup. It’s time to go home, to lie on a beach and congratulate your self on a job well done – except, it seems, if you’re Australian. They are consistent though. For years they’ve taken great delight in proving they train harder that anyone. The problem is they make it so bloody obvious. I suspect they feel the training is a bit pointless unless the rest of the world knows about it. It’s no good being tough unless everyone else knows.

New Zealand – There was only one New Zealand swimmer at the European World Cup Meets, Melissa Ingram. She swam amazingly well, winning the 200 backstroke and almost winning the 400 meters freestyle wherever she went. She traveled on her own and acted and performed like the very best athletes from her proud little country. Sir Edmund Hillary, Colin Meads, Danyon Loader, Peter Snell and John Walker would have been very pleased with the way Melissa Ingram conducted her tour. Polite, quiet, unassuming, a genuinely nice person and a winner; she was a pleasure to watch.

United States – The US did not have its Phelps and Lochte superstars at this year’s meets. That was a pity. The tour deserves their support. However the USA was well represented. I was pleased with the Aqua Crest American. Skuba swam big personal bests in the 100 and 200 freestyle and the 50 butterfly. The tough competition brought out his very best. The four others from the USA, Marshall, Bal, Kirk and Joyce, had good meets, three world records and half a dozen wins. There is no doubt about it the US swimmers are a polished lot. They smile for the cameras and wave to the crowd better than the rest of the world. Their PR is peerless. They back it up in the pool as well. That Tara Kirk might be small in size but she’s got the heart of a lion. She won the 100 IM in Berlin ahead of girls that were probably better than her. She just worked them all to death. It was tremendous fun to watch. It is a shame she did not make the trip to Beijing. She’d have done her nation proud. I was pleased to see Joyce improve at every meet. She’s a class act and should go on to London.

Russia – My opinion of the Russian team is, unfortunately, influenced by my impression of their capital city. What a shambles: whatever it was the communists were hoping to achieve, it hasn’t worked. Their traffic is the worst I’ve seen – and I have driven cars in Bangkok, Paris, London, Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong. Moscow is without equal; no one cares, red lights, green lights, it does not seem to make any difference. Parking is governed only by where drivers want to stop. Our hotel was awful; the one thing worse than their hard beds was their food. The hotel lobby was packed with stunningly good looking Russian hookers offering a “sexy massage”. It was a nightmare. The relief of arriving in Sweden was matched only by my sense of wonder at what the group of pleasant looking Russian swimmers felt about having to soon fly back to the chaos of their homeland.

South Africa – There homeland has its problems just now, but you’d never think it by the attitude and performance of their swim team. They broke world records, came close to breaking world records and won a dozen races with a smile and a laugh that conveyed the very best of this sport. The country has less than 10,000 registered swimmers, but in this World Cup series they performed well above their size. A lot of credit goes to the coach, a guy called Graham Hill, who managed the team with a quiet sense of humor that characterizes many of the world best coaches. South Africa – a happy and successful team.

And finally Sweden – This was my third trip to Sweden but my first to Stockholm and I was impressed. Impressed with the friendly people, the lovely hotel, the good food, the fast pool and especially impressed with the new starting blocks; the ones with the track start, back foot ledge. There is little doubt these blocks will soon become standard issue. The benefit they provide can not be denied for long. I noticed my mate Skuba also thought things Swedish were much to be admired – especially the frequent winner of the ladies' 50 free and 50 fly; clearly the view of an American with impeccably good taste.

Does This Mean There's A Problem?

2008-11-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

By David

It is probably best to begin with a confession. I’m not a great fan of High School swimming. The comprehensive and varied structure of Sub JO, JO, Sectional, Grand Prix and National Meets put together by US Swimming provides ample opportunities to compete. High School swimming doesn’t add much of value and always gets in the way of preparing swimmers for their US Swimming program. I don’t know how it works in the rest of the country but in Florida there are High School meets in pools too shallow to permit dive starts. We have the spectacle of 100 kilometers a week swimmers starting races by pushing off the wall. That’s not wrong because fast swimmers are too important for standing starts. It’s wrong because there are a lot better things they could be doing than swim in races like novice five year olds.

In football, basketball and baseball, High School sport has merit. The High School structure in these sports is their primary structure; the path from learner to professional proceeds through school and college. That is not the case in swimming. US Swimming is self contained. A swimmer can swim in the Olympic Games without ever having pushed off the wall in some High School meet. I’m not denying that some very good swimmers have served time swimming for their local High School. Rhi Jeffrey, Janet Evans, Natalie Coughlin, Jessica Hardy, Misty Hyman, Joe Hudepohl and James Dusing all held National High School records and went on to swim pretty well in the Olympic Games and World Championships.

There is, however, a not-so-golden lining. I was at a District High School meet last week. Thankfully, the pool was deep enough to allow dive starts. It’s a very nice pool actually. Sadly, the swimming didn’t match the facilities. It was all a bit dismal. The standard of High School swimming in the area seemed to be getting worse. I decided to investigate. Here’s what I found:

At first glance, this may appear to be a maze of meaningless figures. However, the truth is far from it the data shows the winning times for every event in our local District High School Meet in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. They paint a pretty grim picture. Consider this:

In 20 of the 22 events, the 2007 times are slower than the 2006 winning times.

In 21 of the 22 events, the 2008 times are slower than the 2006 winning times.

In 10 of the 22 events, the 2008 times are slower than the 2007 times.

No event has consistently improved each year. In the last two years only three events have been swum faster than they were in 2006 – the girl’s 200 IM, the girl’s 100 breaststroke and the boy’s 100 freestyle. The boy’s result was swum by a swimmer from our US Swimming team who has never swum a stroke of High School swimming training.

In some events the times in 2008 are almost unbelievably slower than in 2006. In one of the relays the difference is twelve seconds or 5.5%. In the boy’s 100 breaststroke the 2008 winner was eight seconds or 11.7% slower than 2006. The boys 200 IM seventeen seconds or 12.5% slower; the girls 50 freestyle a second and a half or 5.3% slower. And so it goes on.

Whatever High School swimming is supposed to be doing to improve the health and vitality of the sport; in this instance it doesn’t seem to be working. If you were a parent involved in a team of 22 swimmers and 21 of them were slower in 2008 than they were in 2006 wouldn’t it be time to consider what was going wrong. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics 30 of the 32 winning times were faster than at any previous Olympic Games. Now that’s the sign of a healthy sport. In almost the same period our area’s High School swimming just about managed the statistical opposite. One wonders if it means the opposite as well.

The word of the moment in US political circles is “change”. In High School swimming a bit of that appears to be necessary around here. The status quo doesn’t appear to be up to the task.

FINA World Cup Reminder: Watch the Moscow Meet Live

2008-11-06T02:03:00.000-08:00

By Jane

Sorry about the light posting, Swimwatch readers. David and Aqua Crest swimmer Joe Skuba are currently heading to the FINA World Cup meets in Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin, and I've been traveling for that "day job" thing I've got...

This is just a quick reminder that you can watch the Moscow installation of the World Cup live at UniversalSports.com. Thank God for the Internet, huh?

And, in completely un-swimming related news, congratulations to our adopted country for November 4th's fantastic election results. We don't usually curse on this blog, but please let me take this opportunity to say, "America: Fuck yeah!"

The Sloane Ranger

2008-10-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

By David

Six months ago a new recruit joined the Aqua Crest master’s program. At the time I had no idea of her unique qualities. She seemed normal enough; about 5 foot 8inches tall, short spiky black hair, certainly good looking, probably in her mid 30s and a swimmer easily capable of swimming a 5000 meter set. Her good quality English accent was unusual as was the tell-tale use of words like "lavatory", "loo" and "napkin" compared to the American “bathroom" and "serviette." Such slang is class characteristic and of great interest to "another bloody colonial" as she often referred to her antipodean coach.

I determined to find out more about this unusual recruit and here is what I know now. Her name is Dara. She is both English and American. For her first sixteen or so years, her address was Montpellier Square, Knightsbridge, London. For those of you unfamiliar with Montpellier Square I can do no better than quote one reliable London guide, Montpellier “is a cosmopolitan byword for wealth, taste and discernment. Centrally located in the City of Westminster, the home of London’s elite, providing an oasis of haute couture calm within Britain’s capital city, effortlessly attracting the rich and the celebrated from all over the globe.”

She spent ten years being educated in Queen’s Gate School; an exclusive Knightsbridge grooming ground for London’s young ladies. She admitted being expelled in her senior year for encouraging an insurgency among the students; an appropriate response to what Dara considered a staff discipline injustice. She celebrated the victory of her “invitation to leave” with her school mates over a pint at the Hereford Arms in Chelsea; another fine British place of learning.

A picture of Dara was beginning to emerge. Dara was a “Sloane Ranger”, as genuine as the Sloane Ranger archetype, Diana, the Princess of Wales. More brains and more personality, but a true blue Sloane Ranger nevertheless. Wikipedia describes this species as “young, upper class and upper-middle class women living in South-West London. The term combines “Sloane Square” the fashionable and wealthy London area and the television character the “Lone Ranger”.

I should have picked her background earlier. Her taste in transport is a dead give-away; a convertible Mini Cooper--dark blue of course--and a fine version of all that’s best in the Harley Davidson brand of motor-cycle. I think it’s fair to say that two types of women ride motor-cycles well, the classy and the classless. This is the classy version.

You may be asking what any of this has to do with sport. Sloane Rangers are not commonly known for their athletic feats; except those that take place in London pubs. However it is not that sport to which I refer, although Dara too may be well versed in the games played in British bars. This is different.

Dara is one of Florida’s relatively few certified professional triathlon coaches. She has the Triathlon Level Two certification. I suspect she’s very good at what she does. True to her background there is no nonsense speak. She cuts through the maize of double talk and marketing blather that surrounds just about all sport’s coaching. Like all good coaches she offers clarity in a world often characterised by confusion. I’m pretty certain anyone being coached by her will get the sort of intelligent, honest program that offers hard work and results in success. What’s more, you will have a heap of fun in the process. Whatever your level, if you’re interested in finding someone who knows a lot about preparing for a triathlon, have a look at Dara’s triathlon training website. It’s a sure bet Florida’s coaching Sloane Ranger has a few training tips that will improve your next triathlon.

Have A Look At This: The World Cup on Universal Sports

2008-10-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

By David

Swimwatch received an interesting email this week from Universal Sports, the online and television broadcaster of world class competitions for Olympic and lifestyle sports, including swimming. Their email was to let Swimwatch know that Universal will be broadcasting the FINA Swimming World Cup, starting on October 10^th through November 16^th. They wondered whether Swimwatch would help promote the “free and live coverage of the FINA Swimming World Cup event”.

Nothing would please us more. The World Cup this year will be swum in Brazil (October 10-12), South Africa (October 17-18), Australia (October 25-26), Singapore (November 1-2), Russia (November 8-9), Sweden (November 11-12) and Germany (November 15-16). Follow the live coverage here. Much like NBC's coverage of the U.S. Olympic Swimming trials this July, these online broadcasts allow us to view events that most countries' TV stations don't play on air.

As I have said before the World Cup is my favorite swimming competition. It’s fun, the swimming is always fast and the internationalism of the tour shows swimming at its best. I doubt there is a person reading Swimwatch who does not think the swimming in Beijing was worth watching. Every World Cup I’ve been to has produced the same sporting excitement. It was great to be there when Michael Klim broke the world butterfly record in Sydney and when Hickman did the same thing in Paris and when Popov ruled the sprinting world. I watched in awe as Amanda Beard won World Cup races at a time when she was going through a low patch in her career. That was the stuff of a real champion. In Germany I smiled at Mark Foster easing through his heat of the 50 freestyle only to discover that in a six lane pool he was seventh. I watched Franziska van Almsick win 200 meter races with her trademark, wonderful, peerless arrogance. I’ve seen US swimmers drive Swedish crowds wild by flexing their impressive abs on the starting blocks. The list is endless. Without a doubt watching it on Universal Sports internet broadcast will be worth your time.

You can guarantee the broadcast will be well done. Before I got involved in coaching swimming I coached some track athletes. Some of them were pretty good and competed in the annual European series of track meets in towns like Zurich, Berlin, Gateshead and Brussels. Today I still watch the Universal Sports’ broadcast of these events. Besides bringing back a lot of happy memories the commentators are very good. They know their sport sufficiently well that they educate as well as entertain. I learn a heap of stuff relevant to swimming coaching by listening to the information they impart about athletics. I’ve no doubt their broadcast of swimming will be just as informative and just as much fun.

And finally of course Skuba and I will be at the Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin stops on this year’s tour. Skuba will be swimming the 50 and 100 and 200 freestyle events. You should see him in the water but I’ll have to find out where the cameras are and hold up one of those signs that embarrass everyone back in the USA. I doubt that any sign I could think of could improve on a comment I heard at the pool today. One of our mothers has just completed her “strokes and turns” seminar and has passed the on-line test. She now has to shadow a “strokes and turns” official through six swim meet sessions. I heard he say to another mother that she thought it would be much more fun to stroke a “shadows and turns” judge for six sessions. Some mothers; I don’t know.

Besides the link shown above Swimwatch will be getting a banner for you to click in order to see the swimming in Brazil and the other six World Cup stops. In Europe, don’t forget to look for my “Stroke a shadow-and-turns judge” sign.

A Sure Sign Of Nothing Better To Do

2008-10-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

By David

I do want to assure you that what follows is not personal. In order to do this ,I need your permission to indulge in a very small amount of biography; just enough to verify that the content of this article is not influenced by any personal shortcomings.

I can swim. Not as well as many I have coached, but well enough. In my day I won championships in New Zealand’s capital province of Wellington and in New Zealand’s largest province, Auckland. I trained with Don Talbot in Sydney and swam in the New South Wales Championships. I was second twice to the New Zealand open water champion in the Lake Taupo five kilometer race and second (also twice) in two stormy Kapiti Island to Paraparaumu Beach swims [Editor's note: Yuck]. In life saving, I am the holder of the Royal Life Saving Society’s Bronze Medallion, Bronze Cross, Silver Medallion and Award of Merit. I have passed American Red Cross exams in Coaches Safety, CPR for infants, children and adults and first aid.

That’s the biography bit over. I hope it avoids the accusation that the subject of this article is motivated by a personal inability to swim. But now for the complaint. USA Swimming has just introduced a rule that in order to coach swimming you have to take part and pass a four hour life saving water course and test. Why is that a sure sign of nothing better to do?

Well, first of all, I know of no relationship between the ability to swim and the ability to coach swimming. There is no reason why someone who cannot swim at all should not be a fine swim coach. I never met him, but others may recall a great coach from Ashburton in New Zealand who coached a number of fast swimmers (including national champion Karen Taite) who was confined to a wheelchair. In the US, I guess his days of coaching would be about to end. Returning limbless Iraq veterans better not look to swim coaching as a possible occupation. So much for equal opportunities for the physically challenged. And if the Ashburton coach or the Iraq veteran can be excused, why can’t any other person who can’t swim. In his later years, New Zealand’s best coach Duncan Laing would have struggled with any physical water test. He was still New Zealand’s best swimming coach and produced double Olympic Champion, Danyon Loader. I once employed an elderly coach called Ted Hazel who could no more have passed a physical water test than fly to the moon. For three years he coached my junior swimmers and laid the foundation for three national champions, two national record holders and two medalists at international events. US Swimming’s current rule would have excluded a generation of young people benefiting from his knowledge.

I guess the counter argument is that the coach needs some water skills in case something goes wrong. But how far is that argument going to be taken? When are we going to need a helicopter license to fly an injured athlete to hospital or a defensive driving course in case we decide to drive a swimmer home? I don’t know what the rules are in every pool in the country but at our pool in Florida, a minimum of two life guards are on duty whenever the swim team practice. That’s now effectively three life guards and that’s called overkill.

Question: has anyone in the history of world swimming ever drowned because the coach couldn’t swim? I’ve never heard of it. I notice that the Department of Health and Social Services lists five major drowning risks; lack of barriers, age and recreation in natural water settings, lack of appropriate choices in recreational boating, alcohol use and seizure disorders. No mention of swimming coaches at all. In the United States approximately 3500 people drown each year. Four times that many suffer water related mishaps. Of the 3500 deaths, approximately 650 occur in public pools. Of the 650 deaths, 450 were being directly supervised by their parents. That leaves 200 public pool drownings in the United States of children who relied solely on pool staff supervision. None, as far as I can see, were practicing with a swim team at the time they died. They may have been, but I can’t find any data saying that was the case. I guess my point is: is this measure a safe guard against a non-existent problem?

In saying this, I am not arguing that drownings are not a problem. But are swim team drownings part of that problem? I am not saying that US Swimming’s water safety initiatives are not good and valuable. But is this initiative necessary? It comes with costs that may not be justified by the imagined benefits.

When a public pool is normally staffed by a full compliment of life guards, this measure is good but is unnecessary and certainly should not be compulsory. Only when a pool’s coaching staff is the sole supervision does this measure have validity. That modification would cure the impression of another rule just for the sake of another rule; of nothing better to do.

Some readers appear to need the assurance that a critique of one aspect of an organization is not a condemnation of the whole. A strong case could be made for the proposition that US Swimming is the best run national federation in world swimming. This particular measure is just not a part of that case.

Those Far Foreign Places

2008-09-29T21:54:00.000-07:00

By David

I love swimming’s annual World Cup tour. A year or so ago, it sounded as though FINA was going to drop the whole thing. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. This year, there are meets in Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Russia, Sweden and Germany. Since 1990 I’ve been to about 40 World Cups in eight countries. And they’re all good. They seem to produce an atmosphere of enjoyable competition that other meets usually fail to match. The closest non-world cup competition gets is the annual Monaco, France and Spain Mare Nostrum series.

The internationalism of World Cups and Mare Nostrum helps; the fact that both tours involve elite athletes from a dozen or more countries. The fact that this special and diverse group eat together, compete together, live together and travel together for two or three weeks gives these tours a special aura that the Grand Prix series in the United States and one-off invitation or championship meets have not been able to replicate. Certainly most of the swimmers I’ve taken on the World Cup or Mare Nostrum circuits swear by the experience.

Jane, who edits Swimwatch posts and writes some entries of her own, attended her second World Cup meet in Hong Kong when she was 14. She was there mainly for the experience but swam a great 50 meters breaststroke heat and made it through to the final. I bet she remembers that to this very day. [She does :) - J]

Every year through the early 1990s, Toni Jeffs attended the European section of the World Cup. Danyon Loader, the New Zealand winner of the 200 and 400 meters freestyle at the Atlanta Games made the same journeys. Did you see that Danyon’s coach, Duncan Laing, died a couple of weeks ago? He was New Zealand’s best swim coach; a far cry from the overindulged North Shore oligarchy that run the affairs of swimming in New Zealand just now.

I cannot remember the year, but on one World Cup tour Toni was not swimming as well as she wanted. She was making finals and getting placed but was not winning or swimming personal best times. After a swim in Italy, that she considered especially bad, she informed me that this was the end of her swimming career. She was going to take up body building. I managed to persuade her to go on to the tour’s next stop in Paris and give it one more go. She did and broke the New Zealand 50 meters freestyle national record. Her body building ambitions were put on hold.

Back in those days the World Cup tour culminated in a World Cup Final. This event was the predecessor of the World Short Course Championships. In 1992 the world’s sixteen best competitors in each event were invited to contest the Final to be held on the island of Mallorca,off the coast of Spain. Toni won bronze in the 50 meters freestyle. It was a good meet for Toni. She also beat David Wilkie (Montreal 200 meters breaststroke champion) at pool in a local bar after the swimming. In fact, every New Zealand team member at Mallorca came home with a medal of some colour. No New Zealand team has done that since.

My biggest World Cup mistake was convincing Jane that, instead of boring airplanes the way to experience the series in Europe was to hire a camper van (RV in America) and drive from meet to meet. For us this involved hiring the RV in Amsterdam and in 14 days driving to three,two day meets in Paris (France), Gelsenkirchen (Germany), Imperia (Italy) and back to Amsterdam. It can be done. We did it. But when you include the distractions of taking a wrong turn at midnight just outside Lille (France) and not realizing the error for 400 miles when you noticed the signs saying “Welcome to Strasbourg”, or of bursting a tire on the German autobahn on a Sunday, or of being woken at midnight by a very drunk Frenchman who wanted you to pull his car out of some mud where he and his girlfriend had been spending some quality time. If you are ever tempted by the thought of driving across snow covered passes through the Swiss Alps, of cruising the motorway past Monte Carlo, of parking under the Eiffel Tower at midnight and of speeding past fields of German grapes and French sunflowers, remember I’m still waiting for Jane to forgive me for selling her the same vision. Don’t do it! Boring airplanes work best.

Then, of course, there was the infamous and mentioned on Swimwatch before World Cup party in a pizza bar just off the Champs Elysees in Paris; hosted by a splendid group of British swimmers well noted for their considerable appetite in party time excesses. Fourteen year old Jane was there and responded well. She rang me at 3.00am to declare that she had just found a fizzy drink she liked. “It is” she said, “called champagne.”

You may be wondering why I'm indulging in all this talk about the FINA World Cup. This year, an Aqua Crest swimmer, Skuba, heads off to swim in the European meets. It’s a bit far for an RV so we’ll be going by airplane to Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin. It should be fun. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Live The Dream

2008-08-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

By David

I’m not a big fan of car bumper stickers. Many are little more than crass personal advertising. “My son is a St.Vincent Elementary School honor student” – to which I’ve seen the perfect response “My dog’s smarter than your honor student”. Thank God the parents of really bright or talented children don’t feel the need to advertise the fact on their cars. Imagine the lists – My daughter’s a National Swimming Champion, My Son Has a full Ride to USC, My Son won a State High School Final, My Daughter Swam in The Pan Pacific Games. Ponder for a moment what Michael Phelps mother’s car would look like. She’d never see out the window to drive. And what would Paris Hilton and Britney Spears’ mothers have thought appropriate to have on their SUVs? I know – “My kid has A.D.D. and a couple of Fs.” No, I’m sure family triumphs are best enjoyed at home; not on the side of a motor car.

I have a bit of a soft spot for the sad irony behind “No one died when Clinton lied.” On my way home tonight I saw a little Chevy with an “I love New Orleans” bumper sticker. Not very original I hear you say. I thought so too until I read the small sticker beside it. It said “Drove my Chevy to the levee and the levee wasn’t there.”

The scary ones are the “Swim Mom” and “Swim Dad” stickers. I have no doubt that the guy who invented them did so with the best of intentions. Today US Swimming wants to find out why so many teenagers drop out of the sport. They could do worse than begin by interviewing the owners of those stickers. Have you ever noticed how many more “swim moms” there are out there than “swim dads”? Why is that do you think? Perhaps more moms derive status from their children’s activities than dads? Now possibly that is the place US Swimming should start.

The “Swim Taxi” bumper sticker is a paradox. It may imply that the owner is a touch negative about spending so much time carting children to a swimming pool. That seems strange. What else would they prefer to be doing and what on earth did they imagine having children would involve? Some of the best “quality time” of my life was spent driving my daughter to and from swimming pools. Her tales of a day at Hastings Girls High School were endless and entertaining. Like the day she got into the car with a report from the physical education teacher that said, “Jane lacks aerobic fitness”. At the time Jane was the open women’s national 200 meters breaststroke champion and had just set a national open record of 2.30.67 for the event. Strange breed those PE teachers.

My car has two bumper stickers. One advertises my membership of the American Automobile Association and the other my membership of US Swimming; I’m sure you will agree, a modest enough display. My number plate is a bit ostentatious though. Some might even say it is no different from the “honor student” exhibitions. There is a picture of Martin Luther King on the plate and the words “Live the dream.” I’ve had one or two white Americans tell me they have never seen that plate on a white person’s car. I chose it because King was a huge world personality. Although the dream in his case conveyed an important racial message, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me using his thought to communicate the enjoyment I derive from coaching swimming in the United States. Jack Nicklaus conveyed much the same idea when he was reported as saying how privileged he felt being able to work and earn a living playing golf; to be paid to do something he couldn’t wait to get to each day was something very special. I agree with him. As the number plate says, for me, just now, coaching swimming in the United States is living the dream. However all of that probably does not excuse having it displayed on the back of my car.

Why My Friends Think Michael Phelps Is On Drugs

2008-08-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

By Jane

Update: In case this is coming across the wrong way, I'm completely convinced that 99.99% of athletes, including Phelps, are clean. This is a report on the sad things I hear other people, who rarely know much about sport, say about elite athletes.

The obligatory two weeks where the Whole World cares about swimming, diving, track, volleyball and gymnastics are over. It was fun, wasn't it? Your classmates or coworkers knew the names of your country's best swimmers, plus the names of a fair few other countries' athletes. Americans and Britons watched swimming instead of football. New Zealanders set rugby aside to watch their men's 4x100 medley relay place fifth in record time in the final. Australia did what it always does.

However, when I got back to work the week after the swimming was over, I heard some disturbing things from some of those people who rarely take notice of swimming. It turns out that a lot of them think our sport's best athletes are cheats. And their assumptions are terribly misguided. It's also tough to argue with "knowledge" that has no basis in fact.

The top 6 things I've heard from non-swimming fans about swimming's recent rise and rise are thus:

The drugs are now so good that they can't be detected.
According to public wisdom, swimmers now have super-drugs that haven't made the list of banned substances.
The chemists are so good that they can time swimmers' drug consumption so as not to be detected.
People cite Jessica Hardy's positive drug test when using this excuse. Why, they say, did the substance only show up once in a batch of three tests? I don't know the answer to this and neither, it seems, does anyone else.
The suits did it all for them.
I call this the Craig Lord reason. According to Lord, and a fair few others, the Speedo LZR suits are the primary reason for the number of world records broken this year.
The pool did it all for them.
Commentators talked a lot about the design of the Water Cube's water cube and that's led people to think that a three meter-deep pool, as opposed to a two, has given athletes an extra advantage.
Administrators are in on the cheating.
I hadn't even thought of this one, but when it looked like Michael Phelps had been touched out by Milorad Cavic, several peoeple threw around the idea that Phelps' win was orchestrated in order to assure the American's eight gold medas. Even some conclusive video evidence didn't seem to convince people that there is a reason why coaches advocate not gliding into turns and finishes.

This theory has been around for a while. I sincerely hope it doesn't take place in swimming.
All of the above.
We can thank both the cheats within our own sport and a number from sports like cycling and baseball for this, but many people are simply bored with the rumours and uncertainties. They have fully accepted that everyone who does well is cheating to some degree. They don't care that Dara Torres, Phelps and many others volunteer themselves to the most rigorous, in-depth testing programmes available to science. They don't have chemistry, sports science or physiology degrees but they've made up their minds about elite sport.

I fall into the camp of trust. I don't believe that a majority of swimming's fastest participants are taking drugs or engaging in any other form of cheating. The suits will be helping, as will the depth of the pool, but neither of those two things is covert and neither is against the ruels. You'll also notice that quite a few swimmers weren't wearing Speedo LZR suits and also swam very well: Although Arena, TYR and other brands came out with new, advanced technology, none receieved the praise or the criticism of the LZR.

People say Dara Torres can't be that good because she's too old. They say Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm can't be that good because they're too young. I don't believe that either of those things are necessarily prohibitive to athletic success. Age is a concept that we put in place to explain people's successes, but it really means far less than we think.

Only once have I been completely convinced that I was looking at a drug cheat, and even then, I can't be sure. It was 1999 and I was in Imperia, Italy, at a World Cup meet. I was in the women's locker room and I heard someone begin talking behind me in Chinese. It was definitely a male, and a male with a deep voice, at that. I spun around, only to find two women talking to each other. The one whose voice I'd misplaced as male was built like a bulging weight-lifter from the waist up and was covered in acne. She fit every stereotype we have about steroid users. I don't know her name or what happened to her, and again, I have no proof. And neither do sports fans who have suspicions about today's swimmers, but it is still a common perception that advantages and cheating exists. The question is how to change elite sport's damaged and unwarranted image. Expect to hear about it again in four years when swimming (and track, and cycling...) catches the public eye once more.

The Worst Pools In The World

2008-07-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

"If Concrete Could Burn."

By Jane

Not long ago, we published our list of what we view as the best pools in the world. It's a biased list in that the pools were chosen for various reasons, including their strangeness (Leeds), location (North Sydney), history (Newmarket; Rome) and sentimentality (Long Beach). But for every stunning aquatic centre, there is its ugly, over-chlorinated twin. Thus, we bring you the worst pools in the world... it turns out that they're mostly in New Zealand, but we've simply not visited any real shockers elsewhere.

Clive Memorial Pool
15 Farndon Rd, Pakowhai, 4102, New Zealand

If concrete could burn, it would smell like the Clive Pool. Imagine it for a second. Old, dirty concrete, soaked in chlorine, on fire.

Windowless. Airless. They've added some windows since I last visited, but I doubt they've added oxygen. The starting blocks were rough slabs of concrete. The picnic benches to the east side of the pool were buckling under decades of dampness. The water was murky like a sick Seattle morning when the Space Needle is invisible in the fog. Underwater, I had the feeling I was swimming in blue milk.

Blue, concrete-infused milk that, at some point, had been on fire.

The weird thing about my relationship with the Clive pool was that I completed some amazing workouts there. I swam repeats of 3,000 metres faster than I ever had before in 81 degree Fahrenheit water. I first broke a minute for 100m freestyle there. When my best time for 100m breaststroke was something around 1:15, I completed a time trial in 1:12.

At least part of my successes between 1999 and 2002 were due to training sessions swum at Clive and I'll never forget some of the good times David and I had driving from Napier, listening to our Nissan's bitchin' stereo, on our way to Clive for some swimming. That I had some good times there, however, does not negate the fact that Clive is definitely one of the worst pools in the world.

Lloyd Elsmore Leisure Centre

Lloyd Elsmore Park, Pakuranga, 2010, New Zealand

Admission is free. That should have been our first warning. More than once, we made the mistake of stopping at Lloyd Elsmore to train after the Auckland Championships. Why did we not drive to Papakura or Newmarket? I suppose convenience was our only excuse.

The pool is hot. Really hot. There are fast, medium and slow lanes, but the lane speeds aren't enforced and the lanes are possibly half the size of a standard Olympic width. Frog-leg, 1950s breaststroke is the order of the day, whilst children pour over the lane ropes from the play area. A chronic language barrier means that no one in the pool can understand each other which, with the overcrowding, makes swimming there somewhat like navigating a Christmas sale in a foreign country.

Raumati Pool
Marine Parade, Paraparaumu Beach, 5032, Raumati, New Zealand

Do you like filth, weird hours and draconian life guards? If so, Raumati is the place for you. Let me refer you to the case of a swimmer at Raumati who was banned from the pool for flip turning. Tumble turning. Doing this. I quote:

"Here I am one quiet morning empty lane plodding up and down my last training session before Rotorua half ironman. just a 2km quicky. I get stopped 6 or so lengths into it and told "get out you are tumble turning". I later find out (after xmas) that I have been banned for tumble turning. this has to qualify for pool rage only problem I can't rage about it in the pool now. Any suggestions, help, is it legal, can pool staff enforce ban. I am not a happy swimmer having to travel some distance to another pool (strangely enough run by the same council - go figure)."

The thread I've link to documents the swimmer's ban, at the hands of the Kapiti Coast District Council, which was initially for two years but which was reduced to six months and then overturned entirely. The grotesque crime - flip turning - was apparently not forbidden at the pool, but an overzealous pool attendant simply decided that the technique got on his nerves on that particular day. Other swimmers - including myself - have flip turned at Raumati. The pool even has a swim team. The sad thing is, this is just an extreme example of the normal idiot fodder from small-town pool attendants and city councils.

I seriously hope you're not thinking about tumble-turning...

Napier (Onekawa) Aquatic Centre
Maadi Road, Onekawa, Hawkes Bay 4110, New Zealand

Firstly, I'd refer you to our ancient Napier Pools Guide, which rates the Napier Aquatic Centre, formerly known as Onekawa, as a miserable failure. Everything that Raumati does, the Napier Aquatic Centre can do worse.

A personal view of the Napier pool's misgivings: For a long time, I had no good idea why I had such trouble breathing at night. I'd have awful coughing fits and difficulty regaining my breath, but I didn't have asthma or any other distinct respiratory ailment. I also suffered from a curious light sunburn on my face year-round. Literally two weeks after I stopped training at the Napier Aquatic Centre, having moved across the Pacific to Pullman, Washington, both the cough and the burn were gone. It was the water at that pool.

Again: no ventilation, no windows, no pool rules and a generally aggressive, retarded staff. The water spelled bad. Not like Clive's concrete, but like a dirty bath. Patrons used the backstroke flags as clothes lines. Junk food, dropped on the pool deck, was never cleaned up. The place was putrid.

King County Aquatic Center, aka Federal Way
650 SW Campus Drive, Federal Way, WA 98023

What? Surely the King County Aquatic Center doesn't belong on a post about the world's worst pools? Whilst in a very different league to the above, Federal Way makes the list out of pure boringness. Wet tea-towels are more inspiring. No one could have built a more personality-void, bland shell of a pool if there had been a bland-pool-building competition.

The pool produces great swimmers. There is, in fact, nothing inherently wrong with it, aside from its epic boringness. But its boringness is its downfall.

Until Proven Guilty

2008-07-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

By David

Three months after Reginald Woolmington married 17 year old Violet Woolmington, she left him and went home to live with her mother. Reginald was not best pleased. He cycled to his mother-in-law’s house and shot and killed his young bride. At the trial Reginald claimed he did not intend to kill Violet. He planned to scare her by threatening to kill himself. Accidentally the gun went off shooting Violet through the heart. The trial judge ruled that the case was so strong against Reginald that the onus was on him to show that the shooting was accidental. The jury agreed. On February 14 1935 Reginald was convicted and sentenced to hang. Reginald, however, was not done. He appealed the case to the House of Lords and he won. In articulating the ruling, Viscount Sankey made his famous "Golden Thread" speech:

“Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to what I have already said as to the defense of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception.”

Reginald’s conviction was overturned and he was acquitted; the first beneficiary of the “Golden Thread” that was to become known as “innocent until proven guilty”.

Today, many modern democracies include the right in their legal codes and constitutions. Although the Constitution of the United States does not cite it explicitly, the presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the 5th, 6th and 14th amendments. In Canada, section 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states: "Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

In France, article 9 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, says "Everyone is supposed innocent until having been declared guilty." And if all that is not enough, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 11, states: "Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which they have had all the guarantees necessary for their defence."

Given all this history and universal acceptance, why on earth did Chuck Wielgus, Executive Director of USA Swimming say the following?

"Within the culture of swimming, if you're doing something you shouldn't be doing, we want to catch you and throw you out of the sport. In other sports, it's about excuses and justifications and being innocent until you're proven guilty.”

I never thought I’d see the day when a fundamental human right was so scorned by a public official. Surely Wielgus is not supporting the idea that, in swimming, an accused is guilty until he or she proves their innocence. If he is, then thank God that view is not running the country. I did notice Wielgus was also reported as saying;

"Our athletes are like All-American kids. If you align yourself with them, you don't run the risk of athletes being found in some strip club in Vegas."

In fact of course swimming has had its share of mishaps; DUI convictions, social drug busts and now Jessica Hardy has a performance enhancing problem. It was always likely the Wielgus “cleaner that clean” position would bite him on the bum. And sure enough it has. This is what he had to say about Jessica Hardy’s positive test:

"We are hopeful the matter will be resolved expeditiously. Out of respect for the hearing process, USA Swimming will have no further comment at this time."

I see, suddenly the hearing process becomes important. We are not quite so gung-ho about “throwing you out of the sport” or quick to abandon basic rights such as “innocent until proven guilty.” The change is not so much a flip flop; more of a tumble turn.

And thank goodness for that. Certainly Hardy deserves all the protection the sport and the law can offer. She may have been denied the right to challenge for a gold medal; she should never be denied the right to her “Golden Thread” of justice.

Perhaps There Is Another Way

2008-07-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

By David

As the elite athletic world prepares for the Beijing Olympic Games, the rest of us are being provided with a most graphic example of the difference between the preparation proposed by Arthur Lydiard and the preparation followed by most of the swimming world. The example we are being shown does not demonstrate all the differences. It shows only the disparity in an athlete’s final preparation. When this difference is added to the very real differences in the early stages of a season’s training, the gap is huge.

With a couple of weeks to go before things get underway in Beijing, most of the swimming world’s federations are locked away in training camps, swimming carefully prepared sets. The locations are usually warm and exotic. “Carefully ensconced” would not be an out of place description for swimming’s approach to these final few weeks. Swimmers I’ve coached have spent their final weeks in camps in California, Hawaii, the south of France, Brunei and Auckland, New Zealand.

In track and field there are some who do the training camp thing. The majority of athletes however follow Lydiard’s advice and are out around the world competing. Just last night in Stockholm, Craig Mottram, Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt, Meserat Defar, Jeremy Warriner, Muna Lee, Mashavret Hooker and Allyson Felix, Kimberley Smith and a dozen other probable Olympic medalists were competing in Stockholm. This weekend they all shift to London to do the same thing. It doesn’t matter whether they are sprinters sharpening themselves over 100 meters in 9.88 seconds or distance athletes running for 13 minutes. They are all there. For most of them, London will be their fourth or fifth stop on a seven meet programme of competition before the Beijing meet.

To train in a camp or compete in the full view of the world; this is not a question of shades of grey. One might be better than the other. The difference is far too extreme for that. One must be right and the other must be wrong; one superior and the other deficient.

I happen to be a supporter of the track athlete’s method of preparation. The swimming nation that first realises the difference and wholeheartedly converts its swimming to this preparation is going to steal a march on the rest of the swimming world. The times swum by Hoff, Phelps, Hackett, Trickett and Manaudou will look as second rate as those of Weissmuller do today. Good in their time but unlikely to make the final of a Sectional Meet these days. Anyone interested in what Lydiard would consider to be a dated method of preparation can read about it in Dave Salo’s new book “Complete Conditioning for Swimming”. It’s a good description of what everyone does in swimming today. What the sport needs is to look down the road at what is possible tomorrow – and this book is not that.

Instead of tapering down to a peak – even the term is a contradiction – the Lydiard track method of final preparation is based is a series of time trials and races in the ten weeks leading up to an Olympic Games. The time trials and races are consciously designed mock exams. They are tests during which the swimmer’s endurance, anaerobic conditioning, speed, technique, starts, turns, stroke counts, stroke rates and all the other skills required to race well are tested and retested. Shortcomings are corrected in the week’s other sessions before the swimmer is tested again. This test, correction, test, correction process continues through the 10 weeks, culminating in the season’s main competition. As Lydiard said, “You should be in a good position to pass the main exam after ten weeks of mock tests.” Just as importantly, the season’s main event is a natural follow on from all that has gone before. It is something that is built up to in a logical and controlled manner. It doesn’t take a coaching genius to see that this must have advantages over the traditional "train like mad and stop for a two weeks taper and hope" method used by national squads today.

It is also the method used by the Patriots to prepare for the Super Bowl, the Yankees to get ready for the World Series and the Spurs to play in the Finals. In fact, the best players in just about every sport you can think of these days execute their final preparation by competing as frequently and as hard as possible up to their main event. Wimbledon has Queens and the French Open; the British Golf Open has the European and Scottish Opens. Just about every sport you can think of does this, except for swimming. But just wait until swimming does it too. Rowdy Gaines and John McBeth are going to need a whole new vocabulary.

Arthur Lydiard And The Chocolate Bar

2008-07-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

By Jane

We tell current stories here on Swimwatch, but there are some fantastic stories that hale from the days before Swimwatch existed. A few stories stand out to me as those which made me a swimmer and made swimming life worthwhile at times and horrifying at others.

This is my first installment in a series of tales that help define my life in this sport. They're in a rough chronological order. The first one dates from January 10, 1998.

You believed Arthur when he told you something. Perhaps it was his complete conviction in himself that did it: he passionately believed what he was saying, and so you did, too. In Barry Magee’s words, “when Arthur Lydiard told me I could win a race, I knew I could.”

The first time this affected me personally was in the way Arthur approached me when I was thirteen and needed to swim a freestyle race in Auckland. I had spent the weekend swimming the breaststroke races at the Auckland Age Group Championships, but on the last day of competition, the breaststroke events having been completed, I had been entered in the one-hundred metres freestyle. In the morning preliminaries, I had qualified for the final in second place. Ahead of me in first place was a girl who had been lauded as the next most wonderful thing to happen to New Zealand swimming. She had swum two seconds faster than me, and I did not believe I had a hope of beating her. My family and I were staying at Arthur’s Beachlands house, forty-five minutes east of the swimming pool. Arthur decided half way through the afternoon that he would come and see me swim in the evening. We had been in the car for two minutes, driving west, when Arthur turned to me in the back seat.

“Do you think you can win tonight?” he asked. I was hesitant. Of course, with Arthur Lydiard coming to see me, I would have to look slick, but the girl ahead of me was two seconds faster, a virtual eternity in sprint events.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I can swim faster than I did this morning.”

Arthur turned back to the front seat and fiddled around in his carry-bag. When he turned back to me again, he was holding the largest Rocky Road chocolate bar I had ever seen. Full of marshmallows, jello, and milk chocolate, the thing was about two centimeters thick and five times as long.

“Eat this,” he said. “And you’ll win the race.”

I breathed almost every stroke in the last twenty meters, looking at my competitor in lane four. I beat her by less than half a second. Eleven years later, it's still one of my proudest wins.

No Trumpets, Just Air

2008-07-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

By David

It may be worth saying again that the views expressed in Swimwatch or the Huffington Post or any other blog are only opinions. They are not tablets of stone brought down from Mt. Sanai. There are some who have difficulty understanding that. At the Speedo Southern Sectional Meet last weekend some guy – I have no idea of his name or station in life; he didn’t reveal either – called me over and berated me for the Swimwatch report on the Fort Lauderdale International Meet. He was full of some pretty impressive abuse, calling me and the Swimwatch report “pathetic and nasty, nasty”. My guess is the repetition was for emphasis. Some, perhaps many, who agree with him. However, the Swimwatch article was not a personal attack but simply one observer’s view on a good swim meet that could do with a face lift. I’m sure the framers of the Constitution would see the report as fitting properly into the spirit of the First Amendment. I suspect our Fort Lauderdale reader would not be as generous.

The incident did get me thinking about aspects of swimming in Florida that have caused me surprise. I have spoken of some of these before; the fantastic level and depth of competition in the State, the standard of officials, the hospitality and deference shown to swim coaches, the excellent Sizzler and Sub-JO structure for young swimmers and a hundred other qualities. At the Sectional Meet this weekend one of the referees was new to the area. A Florida Gold Coast official introduced me to her and said if there was a problem she was the person I should contact. What good manners, what courtesy, what class. Everyone respects that. I have agreed with the concern expressed by the sport’s local administrators over the 90% teenage drop-out rate and have admired their willingness to tackle the problem. There are administrators the world over who hide from that sort of self analysis.

Have there been any negative surprises? Yes, of course there have. One stands out. I have been staggered at the speed and frequency at which some swimmers change clubs. Our team has benefited and lost as a consequence of the migratory habits of many swimming families. A club a year is not unusual. I know the President of a local club who had her family batting an average of about that. One of our mid-teen ex-swimmers is slightly ahead of even that impressive statistic. Long term, it’s the athletes who pay for all this vagrancy. There may be short term benefits but a sound long term career can not be built that way.

I do not know why club member’s nomadic behavior is so bad in Florida. There have been some who put it down to the American mania for instant results – fast food swimming. “I did not get the result I wanted quickly enough so I’m off somewhere else” – swimming in the drive-through lane. One parent who left our team after one year told me he was sure our Lydiard programme would produce long term results but, if his daughter was to get a University scholarship, they needed results quickly. Like fast-food, fast-results are seldom the best results. Others have stated that the programme doesn't work, to which I contest that it's not as if they'd know, as none of them actually completed it.

Lydiard had a very strong opinion on this behavior. Many times he said to me, “David I’ve never taken a runner back. Never take a swimmer back.” His view was based on the belief that in a broken relationship, trust lost is unlikely to be repaired. I have only taken a swimmer back once and that didn’t work. After three months she was on her way again. Interestingly, about two weeks ago she was back for a second time asking to be reinstated. Her journey to a third club had not worked out. This time I said no. If more coaches followed Lydiard’s advice, it may curb Florida swimming’s itinerant wanderings. Soon the roamers would have no home to go to. But it would mean losing another set of training fees, and money usually wins.

The effect of all this migration is easy to see. At most swim meet “UNA” is by far and away the biggest club. “UNA” means unattached: the status given to swimmers who have recently shifted clubs and are serving three months probation. At the Fort Lauderdale Sectional Meet swimmers from “UNA” accounted for 216 entries. That is probably about 40 of the region’s best swimmers who are in the process of changing clubs.

I do hope mentioning this oddity of Florida swimming will not result in another poolside ambush. It is clearly a difficult concept for some to understand, but mentioning things that could do with a bit of attention is not a condemnation of the whole. Far from it; swimming in Florida and the International Meet is exciting, competitive and fun. Come to think of it, so is the attention of a disgruntled reader.

Beijing's Olympic Champions Are...

2008-07-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

By David

And so the race has been run. In Omaha, Sydney, Berlin, Auckland and Christiansted, the trials have been held, the cast has been settled. But who will win in Beijing? No one from Auckland or Christiansted, but Omaha, Sydney and Berlin could have a few. I’m not allowed to bet on swimming but for those of you who are and have access to a London bookie here is a list of the swimmers I think would be worth a pound to win.

Men’s 50 Freestyle – Eamon Sullivan

I’ve been fortunate enough to see Sullivan and his American competition swim the 50 this year. Sullivan might not be that much faster but his effortless straight arm stroke makes it all look so easy and that is usually a very good sign.

Men’s 100 Freestyle – Eamon Sullivan

A bit harder to pick because Alain Bernard from France has been preparing quietly and carefully and he is the world’s fastest, but I think Sullivan is a better competitor. American sprinters Garrett Weber-Gale and Jason Lezak are good competitors but not fast enough to take down the Aussie.

Men’s 200 Freestyle – Michael Phelps

No matter what the others do, Phelps has this race covered. van den Hoogenband is good but not as good as Phelps.

Men’s 400 Freestyle – Tae Hwan Park

A close one between Park and Jensen from the USA; I give it to Park because of his unbelievable last length speed. How well he swims may be influenced by how he has handled the fame that came from his swims at the World Championships in Melbourne.

Men’s 1500 Freestyle – Grant Hackett

Hackett is a master at this event and his 400 speed is better this year. He will be too good for Prilukov from Russia or Colbertaldo from Italy, fast and all as those two certainly are.

Men’s 100 Backstroke – Aaron Peirsol

The ultimate competitor and world record holder has too much of all that’s needed to be headed in this event. He should swim faster than his Trials 52.89 world record as well.

Men’s 200 Backstroke – Aaron Peirsol

I’d love to say Ryan Lochte will win this event. He is my favorite US swimmer; tough, hard working and modest. The final will be close but Aaron Peirsol has an uncanny knack of finding the wall first. My guess is he’ll do it again in Beijing ahead of Lochte, second and Ryosuke Irie from Japan, third.

Men’s 100 Breaststroke – Brendan Hansen

Hansen is a better 100 breaststroke swimmer than Kosuke Kitajima. He had a less than impressive US Trials but I’m picking will be good enough to win the 100, especially as the event is his only individual event.

Men’s 200 Breaststroke – Kosuke Kitajima

This should be an easy win for Kitajima. It will be interesting to see what a biased US press accuse him of this time. Bad sportsmanship is just as repulsive when it is practiced by television commentators and newsprint journalists.

Men’s 100 Butterfly – Michael Phelps

Phelps main competition will be Ian Crocker from the US and Frédérick Bousquet from France. They will not be good enough to beat the world’s best male swimmer just now.

Men’s 200 Butterfly – Michael Phelps

In this event Phelps rules supreme. Moss Burmester from New Zealand is a very good swimmer and a couple of months ago won the World SC Championship. If he lived in the US however his very best would not have been good enough to even place in the USA Trials.

Men’s 200 Medley – Michael Phelps

It’s becoming tedious but he will win this one too. His trials swim was a world record 1.54.80. At the Olympics his breaststroke length will have improved.

Men’s 400 Medley – Ryan Lochte

This selection is more from the heart than the head. To beat Phelps, Lochte has to pass Phelps in the breaststroke. Catching him will not be enough. With a hundred to go Lochte with three meters may be too much even for Phelps – I hope so, as I'm a big Lochte fan.

Women’s 50 Freestyle – Lisbeth Trickett

The American sentimental favorite will be Dara Torres. However her best swim at the trials ranks her only fifth in the world. If she lived in Australia she would not even be in the event. This one is going to be a contest between the Australians, the Dutch and the Germans.

Women’s 100 Freestyle – Lisbeth Lenton

Lenton will be too good for the world in this event as well. I suspect Torres will withdraw from the 100 in favor of the 50. Coughlan’s trial swim ranks her seventh in the world. Once again the winner will be Australian, Dutch or German and I think the ocker will take it.

Women’s 200 Freestyle – Laure Manaudou

I would actually prefer to see Katie Hoff win the race but my guess is that Manadou will be too good. Her romantic flights to Italy and back to France and her three changes of coach will find her out in the 400, but in the 200, she should be good enough to win.

Women’s 400 Freestyle – Federica Pellegrini

The Italian and European Champion will be too good for Katie Hoff.

Women’s 800 Freestyle – Katie Hoff

Rebecca Adlington from Great Britain has the 2008 world’s best time in this event. The poms however have a knack of losing when it matters most. My guess is that Katie Hoff has only scratched the surface of her potential in this event. I think she will win and break Janet Evans' world record.

Women’s 100 Backstroke – Natalie Coughlin

Wouldn’t it be good to pick Hayley McGregory as the winner of this event? She is the best backstroke swimmer I’ve seen; not the fittest perhaps or the best underwater but at swimming the stroke she is sublime. Instead Coughlin will win in Beijing. Her underwater speed provides her with an advantage no one will be able to better.

Women’s 200 Backstroke – Margaret Hoelzer

This race will be a close struggle between Hoelzer, Kirsty Coventry and possibly Laure Manaudou. Whoever is coaching Manaudou at the Games should scratch her from this event. She has more than enough to do handling her freestyle events. The Japanese always seem to have good female backstroke swimmers and this year Reiko Nakamura certainly fits that description. For some reason though, they never win the big one. 2008 should be no exception.

Women’s 100 Breaststroke – Leisel Jones

The Australian is a vastly experienced breaststroker now and will be too fast for the rest of the world.

Women’s 200 Breaststroke – Leisel Jones

The American Rebecca Soni is getting better all the time at this event. She is however still two and a half seconds behind Jones and will continue be about that far behind after the Beijing final.

Women’s 100 Butterfly – Lisbeth Lenton

Women’s butterfly is the “weakest” stroke in this Olympic Games. Certainly Inge Bruijn’s 56.61 world record is not going to be broken this year. The race will probably end up as a scrap between Lenton and her Australian team mate Jessica Schipper. The 58.11 that won the US Trial is not going to be anywhere near fast enough to pose any threat.

Women’s 200 Butterfly – Jessica Schipper

The world’s fastest time this year is actually held by the Japanese Yoko Nakanishi. I am however backing the world record holder and the fine tradition of the Australians in this event to produce the winner. The US Trials winner Elaine Breeden swam a good time of 2.06.75 and looked capable of improving on that time.

Women’s 200 Medley – Katie Hoff

This will be one hell of a race. America’s Coughlin and Hoff, Australasia’s Rice and Africa’s Coventry should be the main combatants. Why do I think Hoff will win? Well she’s well coached; she’s tough and just a bit better all rounder than the others. Yes, I think Hoff will be first followed by Rice. But it’s going to be bloody close.

Women’s 400 Medley – Katie Hoff

If Hoff wins the 200 IM she will certainly win this one. She broke the world record in the US Trials and if her past record is anything to go by she will do that again in the main event. Rice and Coventry will be trying to spoil Hoff’s party. But they will not be good enough.

So there they are my 26 Beijing winners. Do you agree?

WTF, OMG, etc. Geeks Like Swimming

2008-07-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

By Jane

Swimwatch has a love-hate relationship with social media giant and social news website, Digg.com. When I published a photograph last year, taken out of the side-view mirror of my now-departed Jeep Cherokee, the picture received a lot of attention from the site's members. It gained 2152 votes, or "diggs", and 214 comments. Many people thought that the picture was a fake (in geek-speak, "totally 'Shopped") and argued amongst themselves about how they could tell the photograph had been manipulated until their mothers made them put down their Mac Books. This amused me; it was nothing but a lucky shot, taken at a red traffic light on a clear San Francisco day with a relatively good little digital camera.

Swimwatch has no chance whatsoever of "getting on Digg" with its regular content. I know a little bit about Digg and what appeals to its users because I work at an Internet marketing company. We do everything from search engine optimisation (SEO) to social media marketing, focusing on sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. The usual content that appeals to Digg users is about politics, humour, technology, science or entertainment. They aren't much into sports, and when they are, swimming is definitely not their cup of tea.

We have far better luck with StumbleUpon, which brought huge amounts of traffic to our story about the best least-recognised pools in the world.

So can you imagine my surprise this evening when I visited Digg to see this story as the latest to have "gone hot" and made the site's front page?

I want to guess that this has never happened before. Nerds and geeks aren't really into Jason Lezak, Michael Phelps and Brendan Hansen. They'll show more interest in Amanda Beard and Natalie Coughlin, but not because of the women's sporting abilities.

The amazing thing about this is, the story in question isn't that sensational. It's a basic New York Times recap of last night's finals session. More interesting things happened tonight, in some ways, with Hansen being upset for a spot in the men's 200 breaststroke and Mary DeScenza missing out in the 200 butterfly to teenagers Elaine Breeden and Kathleen Hersey.

One thing that is interesting crowds like Digg about swimming nowadays is the swim suit technology. Although I warn you not to read - or at least not to heed - some of the comments on Digg stories, you'll see the Speedo LZRs mentioned. You'll also see the regular accusations of steroids, which is a low-blow in most ways. The sad thing about the drugs argument is that whilst it's very unfair on those who are honest, it is likely that, like Marion Jones, some cheats will slip through the doping cracks and onto Beijing-bound teams.

Adding to the interestingness of this Digg success is the fact that Digg reformulated their algorithm recently to require stories to have more votes in order to make the homepage. Two years ago, a story only needed between 35 and 60 votes to become "popular" and thus highly visible. Now, it generally takes close to 100.

Swimming fans should celebrate this small victory in the land of iPhones, video games, political conspiracy theories and silly, humourous pictures. Whilst it's ignored for the most part, our favourite sport sometimes gets the attention it deserves.

The Ups and Downs of a Trial or Two

2008-07-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

By David

This week the United States Olympic Trials are underway in Omaha, Nebraska. Two swimmers swam qualifying times for the Trials while they were training at Aqua Crest. Two others swam fast but were not yet quite at Trial’s level. However 2012 is not that far away. And anyway, the coach would prefer two weeks in London to Beijing.

However the Omaha Olympic Trial Meet was not the only good swimming going on around the world this week. In Monterrey, Mexico the World Triathlon Association held its World Championship biathlon run/swim/run event. The race involved a 2.5 kilometer run followed by a 1 kilometer swim and another 2.5 kilometer run to the finish. Darcy La Fountain from our team was selected to represent the United States in the 50-54 age group section of the event. She did well – winning a silver medal. We are delighted to have a World Championship silver medalist in our midst. Congratulations Darcy, as Muhammad Ali once said, “You done splendid.”

But back to the US Swimming Trials; I’m a fan of Ryan Lochte. A few months ago I met his father and coach at the Hall of Fame pool in Ft. Lauderdale. At the time Lochte was about to go back to Daytona Beach to begin an eight week conditioning period of 90 kilometers a week. Anyone who’s into that sort of aerobic conditioning gets my vote. Unfortunately he was not quite fast enough to take down Michael Phelps in the 400 IM. It must be a hell of a feeling to break a world record and come second in a race. I’m keeping my fingers crossed Lochte can win the 200 backstroke. It will not be easy. One of the world’s best competitors, Aaron Peirsol, will be out to put right his loss to Lochte in the event at the 2007 World Championships.

God I feel for Hayley McGregory. In 2004 she was third in both the 100 and 200 backstroke trials and missed a trip to the Athens Olympic Games. Last year she was at a dinner party I was at after the Nationals in Indianapolis. Because she was born in London and has a parent who’s English I asked her why she didn’t swim for the UK. It would be an easier way to get to the Olympics than swimming for the United States. She said she would never do that. She had committed herself to the US and felt it was important to honour that position. You would think that sort of fidelity would be rewarded. It appears not. So far in this Olympic Trial she has broken the world record only to have it taken away two minutes later, in the next heat, by Natalie Coughlin and she has ended up third in a trial final for the third time. She is such a really, really nice person – it just doesn’t seem right. Incidentally I thought the tone of Coughlin’s interview after claiming back the record momentarily held by McGregory was a bit harsh. It implied Coughlin was not at all pleased someone like McGregory had broken her record. I thought it was an unnecessary put down. Good manners would suggest it could have been done better. McGregory still has to swim the 200 backstroke. It is not her best event but I hope she has a blinder and gets to swim for the nation she has supported so well.

Katie Hoff is swimming well. I was especially impressed with the last 100 of her 400 freestyle. Her 100 splits were 59.33, 1.02.27, 1.01.11 and 59.61. To negative split the last 100 in under a minute will make her really difficult to beat in Beijing; no matter how good Laure Manadou might be. It also means Paul Yetter has done a very good job of coaching his charge. I’m pleased about that. He’s always been very friendly around the pool; quick with a wave and chat about the ins and outs of the swimming world. There is no self important arrogance in this master swim coach.

I’m not at all sure about the wisdom of the huge race programmes that have become popular these days. Phelps is the best example but Hoff, Coughlin and Lochte also have a long shopping list of races. All four are genuinely great athletes. It would be sad if their ambition to take part in many events diminished the quality of their results in Beijing.

I watched Brendan Hansen win the 100 breaststroke and book himself another Olympic meeting with Japan’s breaststroke star, Kosuke Kitajima. You may recall Kitajima beat Hansen in the last Olympics. The reaction of America’s press was biased and crass. They accused Kiajima of cheating by using an illegal butterfly kick. They were right; he did do an illegal kick. But so did every other decent breaststroker in the world. That’s why FINA eventually changed the rule and allowed the butterfly kick that everybody was using anyway. The incident showed America’s sporting press at its worst. I wonder what excuse they will come up with when Kitajima wins in Beijing; as he most certainly will.

There are four more days to go in the trials. Days when the sprinters come out to play and we see the likes of Torres, Weir, Jones and a dozen others do their thing. One thing is certain; America will send as strong a team as ever to Beijing. The Australians are going to have their work cut out. They will however win the men’s 50 and 1500 free and the women’s breaststroke – at least that’s what we’re picking.

The Peter Principle

2008-06-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

By David

In some part of the United States, evolution is not a word to be used in polite company. These souls cling to the idea that we are all the result of a week of celestial work a few thousand years ago. It is all nonsense, of course. We are in fact the partially completed product of a process first observed by Robert Darwin in the 1850 and called the Theory of Evolution. He did not use my words, but he did provide the foundation for the idea that in evolution, systems tend to develop up to the limit of their adaptive competence.

Had Darwin lived to 1960 he would have approved the light-hearted extensions of his idea proposed by Dr. Laurence Peter and Dr. William Corcoran and called the Peter Principle. This principle holds that in a hierarchy, competent individuals are promoted. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent and there they remain; fixed by the system at their “level of incompetence”. Peter’s Corollary says that “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties”.

In his work on Corrective Action Programs in nuclear power plants, Dr. Corcoran noted the Peter Principle at work. He observed that “anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails”. He used as examples vacuum cleaners used as aspirators and administrative devises such as “Safety Evaluations” used for managing change. Human beings have the bad habit, he said, of using what has worked before, even when it has exceeded its effective scope.

I guess if it is possible to observe all this in a Nuclear Power Plant, it would be unusual not to find examples of the Peter Principle at swim meets. This past weekend I attended the Speedo International Age Group Meet in Fort Lauderdale. This meet has reached its level of incompetence. It shows many signs of being something that has worked and is now being “used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails”.

However before listing examples of what I mean, it is important to point out that there is still much to admire. Two years ago, Swimwatch praised the meet’s organization, its size, the officials, the helpful office staff, the use of two pools, the Coach’s hospitality, the display of results, the announcer and the organization of time-trials and scratching. We called the meet a “bloody beauty” and the label was well earned.

Much of that, in fact, probably all of it is still true: even to the extent that we received a reminder email after the closing date when our team’s entries had gone missing. Some things are done very well. There are however some additional features that are spoiling a good thing. Let me give you some examples.

The meet information said the entry procedure was being altered. Instead of paying entry fees in the normal way we would all pay a “deposit” of $40 and the outstanding balance of the fees would be settled at the meet. What this meant was that if the entry fees came to more than $40 you would pay the extra but no refund would be paid if the entry fees were less than $40. In our case this meant that four of our swimmers spent $170 to enter six races and one time-trial; an average of $28.33 per race and that is usury. That price does not include the $5 for each parent to get into the pool or the $5 for a programme. In entry fees and these other direct pool related costs each race cost our guys $43.33. That probably doesn’t satisfy the test of encouraging wide participation in the sport. I know of a hundred people that could not afford that sort of elite pricing. It almost certainly qualifies the meet as the planet’s most expensive as well as one of its biggest.

The pool deck was badly policed. The place was a zoo. I understand the emergency services were called to a sick spectator and were not at all pleased about their access being blocked by a sardine tin of spectators. I don’t blame the police for being upset. In a meet this size access to the pool deck needs to be restricted and enforced. Failure to do so on this occasion made proper coaching difficult and enjoyment impossible.

The provision of warm up space on Friday was inadequate. There is a perfectly good diving well that could have been used for warming up. Instead it was occupied by a dozen or so divers while 1000 swimmers struggled to warm up and down in one side lane in each pool. It must have been possible to take the diving somewhere else for a morning. Imagine the scene, five warm up swimmers per meter at a cost of $43.33 per race. Someone was doing all right and it wasn’t the swimmers.

It could be that this meets organizers need to heed Dr. Corcoran – “anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails”. On this occasion too many failures spoilt one of the country’s best swim meets.

Monaco, Barcelona and Canet

2008-06-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

By David

Aqua Crest has spent the past week in Europe at the Mare Nostrum series of swim meets. There is something about Mare Nostrum and European World Cup meets you just do not get anywhere else. Oh sure, there is just as good competition in any one of a thousand meets in America or Australia. America often has better swimming. The standard of national and Grand Prix swimming in the United States is exceptional. This coming week, the annual Speedo international swim meet is being held at Fort Lauderdale. I do not know what the entry list is yet but there is going to be a staggering 1100 swimmers there and some will be as good as any in the world.

Sunset at the Canet pool, by guyomedw on Flickr

What Fort Lauderdale, or anyone else for that matter, will not be able to do is the internationalism of Mare Nostrum swimming. Buses and dining rooms, changing rooms and airplanes filled with the chatter of swimmers from a score of countries. The pool deck a maze of national track suits. And it is a very good thing. As the tour progresses, you can see a thousand stereotypes being broken. The French are actually a friendly lot and their food is a step up from anything you’d find at Applebys. Other countries can put on a decent swim meet in a well run pool. Monaco has more Ferraris per square mile than even the best streets in Boca Raton. The world is a huge, interesting and vibrant place.

The arrogance that is characteristic of a George Bush wanting to impose with force his preferred way of life on every other nation on earth has no place in the happy scene called Mare Nostrum swimming. For that alone the experience is worthwhile.

It’s also worthwhile for all the reasons other good swim meets are of value. It is educational to see Sophie Edington from Australia go under a minute for 100m LC backstroke and Meeuw from Germany whose best time in the same event is 53.10. I was particularly interested to see, for the first time, Eamon Sullivan, the new 50 LC freestyle world record holder. It was intriguing to note the increased popularity of straight arms freestyle; with Sullivan as its most expert practitioner. In Barcelona, his meet record 100 LC freestyle was swum in a 32/34 stroke count; and that’s impressive.

The woman’s events that surprised me most were the 400 freestyle and 200 breaststroke. In the 400 you have to be under 4.08 these days to get back for a night time swim. In the 200 breaststroke 2.30 will soon not be good enough to make the top eight. Standards are on the way up and it’s a good thing. Progressive promoters are paying better prize money and meeting the travel costs of more swimmers. Their generosity is having a beneficial effect on swim times. United States promoters should take a leaf out of the European race book and do a bit more of that sort of thing.

Is a trip like this beneficial? Time will ll. It gives swimmers a chance to see the best touring this sport has to offer. The effect can be inspiring; encouraging the athlete to move on, training harder in an effort to go back next year for some more of the same. I hope our guys enjoyed themselves. I hope they will be in the group that’ll be back again next year.

The tour’s only cloud came at Miami Airport. My new Green Card meant I had to be processed by immigration separately. It took two hours of waiting in a disgustingly dirty room to complete a process that took less than a minute once my name came to the top of the pile. After two weeks of wandering from country to country with no one even looking at my passport it was difficult to avoid muttering a sarcastic, “Welcome home.”

As Long As It's Green

2008-06-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

By David

This week has been pretty special. The United States Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo prisoners must be allowed to appeal their detention through the US legal system. I am sure the nation’s founding fathers would approve. Granted, there are some very dangerous men in the Cuban prison. That is no excuse to deny them access to justice. They are brutes. There is no need to join them. We are a better society for affording them their day in court. Deny them this and we brutilise ourselves. Fortunately, the founding fathers and the Supreme Court recognised that and wrote and ruled accordingly.

It is important for a nation’s leaders to observe the rule of law. A society will reflect good leadership and bad. I’ve known a few swimming officials who would happily deny the rule of law to an errant coach or swimmer. The worst offender used to be Swimming New Zealand, who would think nothing of handing down punishments without a hearing. I’ve never heard of them water-boarding anyone, but beware, they do have access to the raw materials.
There may be some who think all things Swimwatch should be relagated to Cuba. Fortunately, Homeland Security do no agree with you. You see, this week I became the proud owner of a Green Card. Previously, I lived here on an 01 Visa. The visa had to be renewed every three years. The Green Card is more or less permanent.

Its arrival was however tinged with a degree of sadness and concern for America’s democratic institutions. It has taken me six months of forms, photographs and finger prints to secure this American icon. I tried to follow the instructions on the Government’s web site on “How to get a Green Card” but gave up and went to a good lawyer. No wonder the Mexican fellows I see working their hearts out to keep the nice houses in Delray Beach and Boca Ratton neat and tidy find it difficult to become legal residents. It’s hard enough when you do have the resources and support. For them it must be all but impossible.

Ever since I can remember I’ve heard about the American Green Card. It is as traditional, as filled with history, as Dave Crocket and apple pie. I suppose Henry Kissenger and Arnold Shwartzaneger must, at some stage, have owned Green Cards. They could not have been any more proud than I was when my Green Card envelope arrived. In unseemly haste I tore it open, and do you know what I discovered?
The American Green Card is not bloody green. It’s a dull beige color. There must be some advertising authority that can look into this. A million immigrants pay thousands of dollars to secure Green Cards and get delivered beige ones. Imagine if that happened with motor cars or underwear!

“Could I have a pair of green knickers?”
“Sorry Madam, all our green underwear is beige.”

You’d be out of buisness in a heartbeat. Whoever is the next President after Bush must fix this travesty of justice. In the meantime I’m off to Staples to see if they sell green crayons. I’m not walking around with a beige Green Card.

Fort Lauderdale Seniors' Meet

2008-05-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

By David

It’s just as well the means of transport to a meet is no indication of the quality of what’s going to happen inside. Those arriving in a Porsche are not necessarily going to swim faster than the occupants of say a 1981 Mitsubishi Sigma. I say this only because for much of Jane’s swimming career she was transported to the pool in the “Blue Beast”, which was a $700 1981 Mitsubishi Sigma.

Jane won National titles and broke National records having traveled to the pool in that car. The Blue Beast was an engineering marvel, continuing to run through long periods of neglect that would have finished off most self-respecting vehicles. It did not run well. It was frequently passed on steep hills by East Coast Transport truck and trailer units, fully laden with a thousand sheep. It could not be counted on to even get you there. Jane and I arrived home from one European swimming trip with the Blue Beast on the back of an Automobile Association tow-truck. The Blue Beast’s radiator and automatic transmission had not survived the month in an Auckland parking lot. And on the way to early morning training you had to be careful to use the car’s lights sparingly. Anything more than twenty minutes and the Blue Beast refused to start at the end of practice. The windows, air conditioning and heater did not work. In the Blue Beast, climate control had a whole new meaning.

Actually, the car became nationally famous when it featured in a full page story in New Zealand’s largest circulation Sunday newspaper The Sunday Star Times. Basil Dynan, the President of a team based in the same town as our club, was unhappy Jane was setting national records and his swimmers were not. In a fit of spite, he called the police one Saturday evening and reported that the Blue Beast had been abandoned in the Onekawa Aquatic Centre's parking lot. I guess his hope was that the police would tow the car away. Instead they called the Blue Beast’s home and asked Alison why the car was abandoned. Alison explained it was at the pool because Jane and I were at practice. I understand Basil had to suffer an irate visit from the local police, which served him right. We had some t-shirts printed with a picture of the Blue Beast and the word “Abandoned” printed on the front. The seniors in our team wore them at the next swim meet. Basil’s face was a picture. Just before she left New Zealand for the Virgin Islands Alison, who anyone who knows her will tell you is not normally the revolutionary type, mailed one of the spare t-shirts to Basil.

I have mentioned the Blue Beast only to avoid you thinking that our transport and accommodation at this weekend’s Florida Gold Coast Meet was in any way normal. At the Fort Lauderdale pool there is a Hall of Fame marina. Millions dollar boats are parked alongside the pool. Our swimmer Skuba’s parents have a 65 foot boat, which because they live in New Orleans, is called “Hello Dolly”. Some time last week, their captain sailed Hello Dolly to Fort Lauderdale and parked it in the Hall of Fame marina. For the weekend, we enjoyed comfort and company the likes of which I’ve never had before at a swim meet. Scallops wrapped in bacon between sessions, huge t-bones for dinner, a reserved parking place in the lot that is normally for “OFFICIALS ONLY” and, of course, a difficult 20 meter walk to the pool.

After swimming on Saturday, Captain Billy took us out into the Atlantic. I admit it was probably not the same as the four years my grandfather spent in World War One escorting cargo ships between Fort Lauderdale and Liverpool; but I could pretend. The trip did improve Andrew and Skuba’s reaction time. On the way back to the marina we passed a group of four boats anchored close to the shore. The owners were playing and swimming in the shallow water. About six of them were young ladies; very attractive and also very topless. In seconds, our guys had reached the bridge of Hello Dolly and were using Captain Billy’s binoculars to closer inspect these local shipping hazards.

By now you may be thinking we were not serious about the meet. That would not be true. I like this meet; it is one of my Florida favorites. It is understated and not all that well attended but attracts some very good swimmers. Not packed with thousands of swimmers; just some really good guys trying to beat the hell out of each other.

It’s the closest Florida gets to a World Cup or Mare Nostrum or Grand Prix type meet. It takes a certain philosophy towards swimming to like this sort of meet. I suspect that’s why Gary Hall’s Race Club is always there. It is certainly the reason we’re there. For example, our guys' 50 meters freestyle included Gary Hall, Olympic Champion; George Bovell, Olympic Bronze Medalist and the Olympic representatives of at least three other countries. It was an ideal warm up for the competition the Aqua Crest swimmers will face in Europe next week.

So, thank you Gary Hall and George Bovell and the others. It was fun for our guys to race such huge swimming names. Thank you to Captain Billy and Skuba’s parents for the boat and looking after us for the weekend. And thank you to the Blue Beast for making us appreciate it all.

Publish or Perish

2008-05-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

By David

About six years ago, I published a book on Lydiard’s training methods as they applied to swimming. The process was amazingly simple. Lydiard wrote a prologue and the manuscript was sent to Meyer & Meyer, a leading German publisher of sports books. Eight months later, the book was selling well and reached number seven on the Amazon's water sport’s best selling list. “Swim to the Top”, that’s the book’s name, has slipped in the ranking since then but had done well enough that Meyer&Meyer asked if I could put together a second book on swimming training.

A year later, Jane and I completed the manuscript of “Swimming – A Training Program” and sent it off to see what Meyer & Meyer thought. They seemed happy and in 2004 the second book was published. I had the fun of finding the book in our local Barnes and Noble store and telling the shop assistant that I knew the authors. Jane and I are not going to be able to buy a corporate jet with the annual royalties but its fun enough to have the books in print and be part of spreading the Lydiard philosophy.

Flushed with success I decided it was time to write a novel with a swimming theme. 114,000 words later “Thirty Pieces of Silver” was a completed manuscript ready for publication. Since then things have gone from bad to worse. Meyer & Meyer don’t do fiction so I sent the manuscript to three New Zealand publishers, thinking my association with swimming in that fair land might make the manuscript more interesting. It seems not; “unfortunately” they were “too busy with current projects”.

Perhaps, I thought, the United States would be different. I sent the manuscript to five publishers selected scientifically by stabbing my finger at a list on the internet. The response was overwhelming. All five said they’d read it, all five “loved” it, all five said we were “great” writers; the manuscript was just what every passenger on every jet in every state of the United States was waiting to read. All five sent a contract that we should sign and return as soon as possible. Things did seem too good to be true. I decided to investigate.

Dorrance Publishing wanted me to pay them $17,900 to publish the book. Publish America would do it for free, but there were some pretty awful warnings about them on the internet. American Book Publishing appeared respectable but wanted $9000 up front. Clare Smith sent me an acceptance letter dated May 18, 2008 in November 2007. My impression was of an industry with more than its fair share of sharks circling and waiting to take advantage of vanity; to hit on anyone who had written a few thousand words and wanted to see them on a bookshelf. There are honest publishers in the world. Meyer & Meyer are one of them. The problem for the novice is simply finding out who are honest and who aren’t. If anyone can help answer that question we’d love to hear from you.

So, what’s “Thirty Pieces of Silver” about? It tells the story of the escape from East Germany of the National Swimming Coach and his eventual immigration to New Zealand. The East German secret police track him down and execute two assassination attempts. Through these and other difficulties and by employing Lydiard’s training methods the coach eventually wins three gold medals at the Olympic Games.

The book is entirely fiction but like all make-believe does rely on the author’s personal experience. For example the East German connection is based on when I employed the East German National Coach, Mike Regner. One of the assassination attempts is a distant parallel to the Australian based plan to kill one of Toni Jeffs’ sponsors, Brian LeGros. The airplane forced landing is a description of when I had an engine failure and landed my Piper Arrow in a barley field outside of Wanganui. Jane’s description of the Virgin Islands is from two hot summers spent sweltering in that place. Her knowledge of Lydiard’s training is from ten years spent doing nothing else. Sadly many of the “swimming official” stories actually happened.

But first we’ve got to get the thing published. Perhaps we should just serialize it on Swimwatch, or perhaps you know a better idea.

Athletics Is A Trip

2008-05-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

By David

A few years ago, I spent several summers touring the European track series with my wife, Alison. She competed in middle distance events from 800 meters to 3000 meters. She was ranked seventh in the world over 1000 meters. There were some good runners around in those days. From New Zealand, there was John Walker, Olympic Champion and World Record holder, Dick Quax, Olympic silver medalist and World Record holder and Rod Dixon, Olympic bronze medalist and winner of the New York marathon. You may recognize some of the other names on the circuit, Henry Rono, Don Quarry, Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Renaldo Nehemiah, Tatyana Kazankina and Irena Szewinska.

One of the best athletes was the American James King. He was ranked fifth in the world at 400 meters hurdles and certainly one of the nicest guys I came across on the circuit. In 1979 we visited the Berlin Wall together. Eager to see what was on the other side we climbed a tree close to the wall. I noticed an East German sentry peering at us through his powerful Weiss binoculars. He seemed to be paying us close attention. I looked at James and was horrified to see my mate giving the East German guard the middle finger.

A notable feature of the track world back then was the number of attractive young ladies who followed the circuit providing home comforts to the world’s best runners. Two of the best known were from London. I even saw them at a World Championships, sitting comfortably in the VIP section of the stadium. One world class athlete told me he knew he’d made it to genuine world class, not when he’d broken his first world record or won his first championship, but when he was propositioned by one of the London ladies.

At the end of the Coke Meet in London’s Crystal Palace I was talking to James King when he was called over by the same young woman. He excused himself and walked over to where she was standing. After a short conversation he wandered back. Now, I have no idea what they discussed. Indeed I am not the slightest bit interested. All I can tell you is he came back to me, smiled and said, “Athletics is a trip.”

There are occasions when swimming too can be a trip. Our team is going through an interesting period. Last weekend we had a junior regional swim meet at our home pool. We had a record number of entries, made 20% more income than expected, had four swimmers qualify for senior competition and enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve mentioned before how well coaches are treated in the United States. Well, if you are a coach, you should have been at this meet. The food was fit for royalty and was served by a senior American Airlines flight attendant. Now that’s got to be hard to beat.

This past weekend, three of our master’s swimmers competed in the YMCA National Championships in Fort Lauderdale. Darcy swam the 1650 yards yesterday and was second. She wasn’t too happy with the swim, but second in the United States is never a bad result. Bonnie and Bob swam today: in five swims, they won a gold, two silvers and two bronze medals. There are two days to go and with an ounce of luck they may well improve their medal tally.

Next weekend, we will once again swim at the Swimming Hall of Fame pool in Fort Lauderdale. This time, the event will be a Florida Gold Coast championship meet. Skuba and Andrew are our best chances of success. They will both swim the men’s 50 and 100 meters freestyle. Skuba’s parents are parking their yacht in the Hall of Fame marina as our accommodation for the weekend. Can you imagine that? Where else in the world can you stroll in one minute from pool to yacht just in time for a steak lunch and a nicely chilled New Zealand Chardonnay? This swimming thing, it’s a tough life.

(From Jane, who edits Swimwatch for the minimal price of nothing: By Christ, that's a change from the Blue Beast, parked in front of the Flaxmere Aquatic Centre. Can I remind you of how we got to Waipukurau on the day I broke that 200 breaststroke record? I sure as hell don't remember any yachts ;) In fact, I remember having a can of V in the Blue Beast on the way down from Napier. And true to form, I'm as jealous as all can be! My New Zealand swimming memories are remembered through chlorine burn and the smell of heavy chemicals in the locker rooms. Enjoy yourselves; I'm willing to admit that you deserve it! I'll just have another martini and look at the Space Needle!)

The Thursday after Fort Lauderdale, Andrew and Skuba head off to Europe for the Mare Nostrum series. They will swim in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Canet. I’ve been a couple of times before and it is a great series in three wonderful towns. From high up on the French motorway, it is impossible to tire of that first view of Monte Carlo. They call the place a millionaire’s playground and it is a title well earned.

Most of Barcelona, like many of the world’s big cities, is sprawling and ugly. Not as bad as somewhere like Mexico City, but heading in that direction. What Barcelona does have though is a waterfront heart of plazas, arcades, squares, shops and cafes. Barcelona also has a heart of history, reminders of the adventures of Columbus and the struggle of the Catalan people. Canet is one of this world’s truly lovely places. It is a small Mediterranean coastal village, close to Perpignan and the Spanish boarder. Little restaurants sell fantastic French food along a wide sandy beach. It’s just so incredibly French. Old men play boules and smoke pipes and talk about how bad things are in Paris. Young women swim with far too little on for sensitive eyes. Best of all, it’s not on the foreign tourist trail. It’s more a place where the French go to holiday. All this and some of the world’s best swimming. We are looking forward to it.

At the end of all this I am hoping Andrew and Skuba swim well enough in Europe to qualify for the US Trials in Omaha, Nebraska in the first week of July. It is a lofty goal. But that’s a good thing.

So that’s what the next month has in store at our place. James King was right: “Athletics is a trip.”

A Month Away

2008-05-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

By Jane and David

David: When we relaunched Swimwatch in 2006, we promised never to abandon it again. Sadly, the past month has been a bit of a fail on our part, as Jane has been traveling the world doing her real job and I'm not good at working the publishing software, as elementary as Jane says it is. To be more accurate, Jane has been in Sydney, Australia, speaking at an SEO and internet marketing conference. She also stopped for a week in Auckland, New Zealand on her way back to Seattle.

Jane: My trip to Australia, whilst having nothing to do with swimming, was an incredible trip down memory lane. The conference I attended (SMX Sydney, for those of you who are into search engine optimisation. What? None of you?) took place in a building at Luna Park. Everyone who's been swimming in Australia knows that Luna Park is right beside the North Sydney Pool.

In Swimwatch's opinion, the North Sydney Pool is the greatest swimming pool of all time. I didn't list it first on my "Best Least Recognised Pools" post, but I would now. I'd forgotten just how fantastic it is. The closest I came to swimming in the pool again was going to dinner at Aqua, a restaurant that now overlooks the pool from the fifty-metre end. As you can see from this picture, taken before the New South Wales swimming championships in early 1996, the restaurant has not always been there. In fact, twelve years ago, it seems that the place was little more than a ratty office. Underneath the white and red striped canopy at the end of the pool now resides one of Sydney's better restaurants.

This is what is there now.

For anyone else who's vaguely interested, there are quite a few more of my pictures of the views of the pool on Flickr; this links to the first picture taken at Aqua. One word of warning: it's probably not good pre-practice food. And don't drink as much port as I did, either.

David: Jane tells me Auckland has changed in the six years she has been away. Much more impressive, she says, with lots of waterfront cafés selling New Zealand’s increasingly popular wines. Boutique shops are preferred to concrete jungle malls. All that sounds like progress.

Certainly New Zealand’s swimming made progress during the month. They finally won a race that mattered. Moss Burmester won the 200m Butterfly at the World SC Championships in Manchester, England; very well done Moss. Never again will I be able to say that Moss’ coach Jan Cameron has never won a decent championship. The country is still worse off than when Loader, Kingsman, Simcic, Bray, Winter, Langrell and Jeffs were winning medals at similar events, but any win for Cameron is a good win. In his early career, Moss had an excellent coach called Clive Power who clearly laid an important early foundation. Cameron is fortunate to inherit such a well coached product.

I see New Zealand’s sport funding agency, Sparc, hasn’t changed. This time they are writing threatening letters to New Zealand Rugby League telling the sport how to run its affairs. It’s all the usual blackmail, “Do what we say or we will cut off your funding.” They only give the sport about $200,000 a year. I’d tell them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. It’s hard to have respect for an organisation whose Chief Executive insists on abusing the Queen’s English. His comments on the Rugby League situation include the following gems, “[they need] to put their sport on a proper footing going forwards" and “they need help to move forward by identifying key issues” and, “Sparc would need to consider how justified continuing investment going forward would be." That “going forward” stuff is all so unnecessary; a sure sign you’re talking to a guy of little substance. The head of New Zealand Rugby League made the issues most telling comment, “They are too powerful to ignore." Isn’t that the truth? It’s sad though when might replaces right like it has in New Zealand’s sport funding.

While we've been away, Swimwatch has continued to receive its share of loony messages. For some reason, one genius decided to have a crack at Jane and wrote the following:

You're just bitter because you weren't that fast of a swimmer and are mad at yourself. You could look at the positive things like the amazing work ethic that every swimmer leaves the sport with. Or you could examine yourself and decide whether or not you actually put it all on the line and gave the sport your all. If you had you would have found out things about yourself that you would never find out otherwise.”

Although the comment was “anonymous”, I recognise the writing style and can confirm it is the product of personal failure; a not unusual reaction. For the record, Jane was a four time national open or age group New Zealand record holder, three times national open women’s champion, Division One NCAA Championship qualifier, Caribbean Regional Champion and record holder, Pan Pacific Game’s representative and an Oceania Games silver medalist. In the course of accumulating that record she swam 27,548 kilometers, that’s an average of 53,000 meters every week for 11 years. What sort of insulting, stupid fool says "Or you could examine yourself and decide whether or not you actually put it all on the line and gave the sport your all" to someone who put in that sort of work and achieved those sorts of results? Shame on you, whoever you are.

Here, in Florida, things are pretty normal. The team has just begun their summer racing program. Andrew and Skuba were first and second in the men’s 50m free last weekend at a local meet; a pleasing result for the season’s first race. They will race in four more meets before heading off to the European Mare Nostrum tour and meets in Monte Carlo, Canet and Barcelona. That’s where the big boys come out to play. It will be fun to find out how our two get on. The Americans are an amazingly generous people. They give willingly and without condition. We needed to raise money to help with the cost of going to Europe. The response has been humbling; thank you. Many of the Master’s swimmers are preparing for their triathlon season. Most notably Greg has the Hawaiian Ironman this year. Darcy continues to win her age group in every event she enters. She is an amazing athlete. I guess that’s what 52 looks like these days.

Next weekend our team hosts a Florida Gold Coast Sub JO Meet. That’s the beginning level of competition around here. Through the course of a year all the local clubs share the hosting of one of these events. They are well run and a terrific introduction to swimming competition. The only change I’d like to see are ribbons being given for personal best swims rather than for first, second and third. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against winning and losing. I just think establishing a culture of “I did my best” early in a swimmers career is a good thing.

It’s good to be back.

Verschärfte Vernehmung

2008-03-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

By David

Swimwatch is a website that primarily concerns itself with swimming matters. Occasionally we have strayed and have discussed the New Zealand All Blacks or world class running. Even more occasionally, we have dabbled in politics and religion. You may recall I wrote a piece supporting Hillary Clinton’s bid to become President. Jane added her support for Barack Obama. However, having now seen more of Obama, I think she may have a point. Certainly the country needs either of them compared to the right wing alternative. The best writing on Swimwatch is the piece Jane did about life in the US Virgin Islands. It’s called Licentious Phoenix. I wish I could write with just a fragment of that feeling and accuracy. But the Swimwatch primary mission is still swimming.

Except this month, when an event occurred that is so despicable, so devoid of all that’s decent; an event so pervasive that its fallout will eventually affect every corner of society, even our watery sphere. Remember this date; on Saturday, March 8 2008, the United States endorsed the use of torture. By signing a veto of the Bill from Congress banning torture President Bush has approved its use. The President brutalized his society.

And it will have an effect. Condoning State violence will eventually affect us all. There will be more murders. More college freshmen will die with a hole in their head. The country that already boasts the world largest prison population will need more cells. "Might is right" has been sanctioned. Someday we will be affected too. Coaches will increasingly accept the philosophy of winning at all costs. If it takes steroids to get it done, why not? Officials with avarice for power will hold hearings and pass verdicts without advising the subject of the hearing. They will disqualify without properly recognizing the right to protest. Parents will punish poor performance. State brutality perverts everyone.

Our State does not call it torture of course, preferring, “Advanced Interrogation Techniques”. I wondered where that abuse of the English language came from. Do you know what I found? This is what I found in Wikipedia.

“The former editor of The New Republic Andrew Sullivan claimed that "enhanced interrogation" bears remarkable resemblance to the techniques the Gestapo called "Verschärfte Vernehmung," for which some of them faced prosecution after World War II and were "found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death." Besides the similarity of the practices, the German term "verschärfte Vernehmung" may be translated as "enhanced interrogation".

A 1948 Norwegian court case described the use of hypothermia identical to the reports from Guantanamo Bay. The defense used by the Nazis for applying the techniques "is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration." Most notably the concept of unlawful enemy combatant is invoked to justify its implementation on "insurgent prisoners out of uniform". The now familiar ticking time bomb scenario as a rationale for allowing torture had its precursor in the Gestapo's "Third degree" measures. But while the Nazis' interrogative methods were found to be torture, The New York Times writes that the Allies' methods at the time were far more effective and far less abusive than those the United States uses now.”

It remains to their eternal shame that Clinton and Obama were too busy getting themselves elected, to get back to Washington and vote for the ban-on-torture measure. It goes to show the extent to which our society has already accepted force, pain and evil. But if you think their neglect was bad consider this: John McCain did turn up and voted against the Bill. Six years of being tortured by the citizens of the last country the United States invaded and McCain learned nothing. Whether through their neglect or action, those wanting to guide this nation through the next four years have made a pretty poor start.

But not as bad as the George W. Bush finish. We all know he prides himself on his “Christian” values. It would do him well to read Mathew 7-16: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” or any one of a thousand other New Testament verses counseling mercy ahead of vengeance. Romans 12-19: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, for it is written, Vengeance is mine; saith the Lord.”

Well President Bush, your actions in this event are not Christian or legal. They have brutalized and diminished you and your nation and maybe eventually our sport. For that you are not forgiven. We doubt that St. Peter will be that impressed either.

Ten Things I Find Stupid About Swimming

2008-03-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

By Jane

I've sort of taking up the position of skeptical retired writer here, and whilst I'm probably perfectly qualified to write about more valuable topics, I quite enjoy bringing the ex-swimmer's perspective to a blog about swimming commentary.

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of me quitting swimming. In the first few months afterwards, I began to recognise some things about the sport that are pretty strange, and after having recently attended my first swimming competition (this time as a spectator) since March 2006, I've thought of a few more things that are a bit... odd.

1. No surprises here. The cheering.

It's silly. Very rarely did it get me excited about swimming and most of the time, having to partake in such ridiculous behaviour was just demeaning. And no matter how good of a backside you have, no one looks good doing that. Attending a swim meet recently also proved to me that there's only one thing worse than being part of these cheers, and that's watching them. Call me a spoilsport or a bad team member if you will: I'd have rather saved my energy for the 400IM.

2. Warm-up protocol.

Coaches world-wide have the idea that they know how you should warm up for a race. Generally, their ideas are pretty solid, but it's now beyond me why every swimmer in the world should be able to warm up for a race in some what the same way. The best two races I've ever competed in were swum on about 700 meters warm up. I, and my coaches, should have learned something from this.

3. The idea that swimmers never reach the age of 18.

I was 22 when I quit, but plenty of people have carried on swimming far past this age. It's stunning how swimmers are almost always treated like irresponsible fourteen year olds, well into their twenties and sometimes beyond. It's a special coach who can treat a team like the adults they often are. If they make childish mistakes, they should have to deal with them like all adults who make childish mistakes.

4. Training camp.

I. Hate. Training camp. Yep, that one is still in the present tense. It will take me a few more years to get over the horror that is training camp. Dress it up any way you like, call it "winter training," "training trip", "The University of Randomtown's Annual Trip to West Palm Beach", it's still training camp and it still sucks a lot. I have only ever enjoyed one training camp, and that was when my college team went to Miami.

Miami was made bearable by a few interconnected factors, such as the proximity of Miami to my parents' house, the training being not quite as deathly hard as during previous years, good weather and the fact that my boyfriend happened to be in town. That was also frowned upon, but contrary to popular belief, my coaches didn't have any authority over where he spent his holidays.

Training camp was the bane of my existence for my entire swimming career. The above link details some of my objections to it, but I'll leave you with an image of how damn happy my classmates and I were at the end of training camp, senior year.

5. Making national holidays a living hell.

Following on from training camp nightmares, swimming programmes often take a national holiday (Veterans Day, Queen's Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, etc) to mean that a miniature training camp should occur. Training will be twice as hard, twice as long and will basically go on all day. Because it's a national holiday, you'll be allowed to sleep in until 9am, but practice will take place at 9:30, weights at 12 and another swim workout at 2pm.

Why is this necessary? If it had been up to me, I'd have gone swimming at the usual time (most likely 6am), enjoyed my day off school or work and gone back to the pool at 3:30. As per usual. As opposed to most people, swimmers often dread national holidays. And don't even get me started on Thanksgiving.

6. Never shaving.

I understand this to a point. It feels great to shave down for a big meet and if you're a particularly hairy person, the lack of leg hair probably makes a difference when you take it off. I wouldn't know. But really. Come on. Never shaving your legs is just gross. Upon quitting, I shaved my legs every day for a month, just because I could.

Some coaches and swimmers treat shaving - or not shaving - as a combination of sacrifice, ritual and religious adherence to the groupthink that the team who's hairy together, wins together. Thinking about shaving your legs for a Christmas party at which you'd love to break out a cute new red cocktail dress? Don't expect to make your NCAA cut, traitor.

Yuck. Whatever. Give me a razor.

7. Small fins.

Don't look at me like that. You know the ones. People call them "zoomers." Those little fins that are barely bigger than your feet:

Some people swear by them, but I can't stand them. To me, they achieve nothing but negating all feel of the water I have with my feet. Everyone knows about the talent associated with manual feel of the water - the ability to put your hand into the water and just know what to do with it. Feet are the same, and shoving them into zoomers is a sure-fire way to render a functioning pair of legs totally useless. I kicked slower with zoomers.

8. Training for punishment's sake.

Most swimmers have had this happen. You are given a set with time constraints. If you don't make certain times for certain intervals, you're forced to do more and more until you complete the whole set. Obviously, you get tireder and thus reaching the required speeds becomes harder.

This is ridiculous. I don't know (read: doubt) if any coaches read this, but please, for the love of God, don't partake in this idiocy. I've known swimmers' entire seasons to be ruined by these sets. Training shouldn't necessarily be a constant enjoyment, but it should never be a punishment.

9. Long course snobbery.

This isn't quite the problem in the United States that it is elsewhere, solely due to the high school and NCAA, twenty-five yard system. We get to watch world-beaters take short course swimming very seriously. In various other countries, namely the United Kingdom and Australia, there are people who'd have you believe a short course world record was worth less than a participation ribbon at a long course chocolate fish carnival.

Bite me. There is no good reason why a great swim in a twenty-five meter or yard pool is not as valid as a great swim in a fifty-meter pool. Do not tell me about which prestigious swim meets take place in fifty meter pools; it makes no difference to the legitimacy of good short course performances.

10. The following disqualification rules.

Some race rules baffle me:

Thou shalt not kick on one's front when completing a backstroke turn. This isn't an NCAA violation, only a FINA rule. Turning onto your front and kicking into a wall during a backstroke race is a fantastic way to slow down. That it's against the rules in FINA but not banned in NCAA competition speaks to its pointlessness.
Thou shalt not move on the blocks. We've discussed this one before, questioning whether or not it really is a rule. However, I always found that being unsteady on the blocks was a disadvantage. Not only this, but I could never see my competitors, so it didn't matter to me whether or not they were moving.

Whether you agree with me or not, I'm sure there are other ridiculous swimming rules, norms, traditions and phenomena that its participants don't understand. I'd love to know where some of these originated, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure they'll never change.

Nude But Not Degraded

2008-03-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

By David

One of our triathletes is a second year student at Florida Atlantic University. She’s doing a course on feminism and has been asked to write a five thousand word paper on a female role model. I thought Swimwatch might help. The tutor has asked that the work of the chosen woman be contrasted with the images of exploited women found in glossy magazines and television advertising. FAU clearly wants its young students to end their course as pious apostles of Madame Curie, Florence Nightingale and Indira Gandhi. It seems the works of Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell are not viewed too favourably in the feminist corridors of FAU.

But I wonder if this is actually right. I don’t mean to denigrate the contribution of Madame Curie, Florence Nightingale or Indira Gandhi. They are remarkable women who touched and improved the condition of their generation, their gender and their world. It was and still is true that the road walked by women of ability is harsh and more difficult than their male peers.

Even in swimming, that’s true. The attitude of men is fairly easy to identify. Men in the training pool risk heart attacks trying to prevent a Rhi Jeffrey or a Darra Torres from passing them. Day after day, these women swim alongside men who feel threatened by a female and immediately increase pace to prevent her passing, their neck and shoulders bright red as they strain to avoid the inevitable. They would be far less likely do this if a male was trying to pass.

Weight training is where you see the most extreme examples of men’s ingrained belief in their superiority. Go to a gym and try a 100kg Lat Pull Down or a 40kg elbow raise. I’ve helped female swimmers who have lifted these weights. But the reaction of men is fascinating. The young bloods that surreptitiously set their own weights to the same level and then strain and struggle to do the lift. Many well-meaning males warn female swimmers of the dangers they face lifting heavy weights. They’d never bother if it was a man.

But my reservation with FAU is the implied criticism of Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. You see, if it is right that women are degraded by what these women do, then women today should be more vilified than they were one hundred years ago. After all, in those days no one appeared in a bikini trying to sell anything. When women were denied the right to vote, there were precious little of the fun and games Pamela Anderson gets up to these days. The lot of women appears to have improved as the behavior of some women has become more unchecked. Perhaps their liberated behavior has helped.

It also seems true that the quantity of clothes women wear or what they advertise has little to do with their social freedoms. Some of the most clothed women in the world live in the most awful repression. Pamela Anderson may show a few too many tattoos for sensitive eyes, but it does not prevent her society educating her or giving her the right to vote. That’s more than you can say for the jilbab clad women of Afghanistan.

My swimming role model for the FAU essay will be Amanda Beard, the current Olympic 200m breaststroke champion and subject of a recent Playboy photo shoot. My guess is the feminist staff at FAU will share USA Swimming’s horror at Amanda Beard’s Playboy spread. They too will mumble about swimming being a family sport and photographs that degrade women. Can’t you just hear it? “She was such a nice girl when she was fourteen and won all those medals in Atlanta. It’s such a shame. Just look at her now. In Playboy – of all things!” But again I’m not so sure.

I’m certainly not suggesting that any other swimmer appear in Playboy. But I am pleased Amanda Beard had the opportunity and the right to do the article. FAU and some swimming officials may not like it, but what Amanda Beard did was not degrading. On the contrary, it’s a thing called freedom and that’s worth hanging on to, even if it does involve the occasional good looking swimmer appearing in Playboy. Posing for Playboy may or may not be good for women or the sport of swimming; having the freedom to appear if you want to is very good for both. USA Swimming deserves credit for not trying to censure Beard for her Playboy adventure. I know of more than one Association around the world who would not have been so restrained. And that would have been degrading.

Well done USA Swimming; pity about our “D” in the feminist class at FAU though.

Heartaches By The Number

2008-03-08T21:47:00.000-08:00

By David

New Zealand has had to settle a king-size sporting problem this weekend. The world’s two best single scull rowers live in New Zealand. This weekend, Mahe Drysdale and Rob Waddell compete in trials on Lake Karapiro for the one place available to New Zealand in this year’s Beijing Olympic Games. Hopefully by the time I’m finished writing this piece I will be able to tell you which athlete will go and which one will have to find another boat or stay at home.

Drysdale is the current world champion and the fastest single sculler in history. He enjoyed a spectacular 2007. He edged out Marcel Hacker in one of the great single scull world championship finals to win his third straight title. He also won the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta and numerous other titles in the United States and Europe.

Rob Waddell won the Sydney 2000 Olympic gold medal in the men’s single scull. He then retired from rowing and played high level rugby before taking up a position with Team New Zealand to defend yachting’s prestigious America’s Cup. Waddell’s return to rowing has been marked by an unofficial world record on the indoor rowing machine. Earlier this month over 5,000m he went under 15 minutes finishing in a time of 14:58.03. At the same trials, Drysdale finished in a personal best time of 15:11.

There are some in New Zealand who bemoan the fact that both these champions can’t be in Beijing to settle their personal rivalry. They have a point. If the function of the Olympics is to sort out who’s the world’s best, it seems a bit silly to exclude the world’s second best from the race. Don’t feel too bad for New Zealand though. America faces the same problem at every Olympics in a score of events.

Take swimming for example. The table below shows the number of Americans ranked in the world’s top eight in selected Olympic swimming events. Only two will get on the airplane to Beijing. The others, who could reasonably expect to make the Olympic final, and maybe even win the race, will instead be sitting at home watching it all on TV.

And so American swimming will have at least sixteen Waddells and Drysdales sitting at home watching events they are potentially capable of winning. Not only that – for the Americans, this problem exists at every Olympics. No wonder the Olympic Trials here are cut-throat affairs. However, it has to be said that they are only a natural extension of the fierce competition that characterises swimming in this country from Florida’s “eight and under” Junior Olympics to the Olympic Trials.

I think that’s why you seldom hear American elite swimmers complain about missing selection. Since they first put on water-wings, they’ve lived in swimming’s most merciless habitat; for them it’s normal.

The problem in America is not restricted to swimming. The table below shows the same data for selected track and field events. Track has the luxury of selecting three competitors in each event.

Another seventeen of the world’s best athletes are left sitting at home. Have you ever wondered why one of the US territories, such as the US Virgin Islands, Guam or American Samoa doesn’t offer these “left at homes” a chance to compete? All you need to represent these territories is a US passport and live in the territory for three or four months. With a little bit of imagination, the US Virgin Islands could go off to Beijing with the second best swim team and track team in the world. The Virgin Islands relegates Australia to the world’s third best swimming nation. What a wonderful thought!

But back to Waddell and Drysdale: what happened in that race? Well, Drysdale won two out of the three trials and is going to represent the country and New Zealand Rowing are going to have to find a spot in the crew of another boat for Waddell, or leave him in New Zealand. Incidentally, New Zealand Rowing had better pick Drysdale. Over the last couple of days they’ve made noises about not being tied by the result of the trial. That’s the sort of dishonest nonsense that Swimming New Zealand used to get up to as well. It used to drive me mad. At least in the States a trial means a trial.

This is international sport. It is right and proper; the loser of the rowing trial is going to have to watch his countryman compete in the Olympic event he could very well have won. Unless of course we rush through a US passport, and he too can represent the US Virgin Islands.

Swimming Is More Fun With Mojitos

2008-03-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

By Jane

Do you like "signal" posts, as opposed to "noise?" Would you rather hear training theories, racing tactics and various other competitive swimming anecdotes? If so, you may want to join our impressive bounce rate and Back-button on out of here, because I'm about to talk about nothing of the sort. Maybe this could be considered a training theory, but don't call me in a fit of rage when you don't make your Olympic Trials cut. I would make a lousy coach; let me show you why.

I like to drink when I swim now. Thankfully, I don't swim very often and (equally thankfully) I don't usually get to drink whilst swimming, but I did this week at the SMX West conference in Santa Clara, California. My co-worker and I arrived in California (oh my God, it's more than ten degrees above freezing!) and headed straight for the Santa Clara Hyatt's pool. After a careful investigation, which involved me swimming a few lengths and making an educated guess, we deduced that the pool was twenty metres long. We were equipped with caps, goggles (yes, I wrote "googles" the first time. Shut up) and real swim suits. We were ready to "work out."

You see, my co-worker will compete in a triathlon this summer. She is preparing for her first half-Ironman. She completed the Vancouver Marathon last summer. She isn't as strong a swimmer as she is a runner yet, but she's been swimming three or four times a week and didn't want to halt her regime during the four days we were in California.

We started off well. She had five or ten minutes of warm-up to complete. I swam away on one side of the pool while she swam on the other. There were no lane ropes and no other swimmers. Right before we'd begun, however, three of our friends from the UK had turned up beside the pool (it's a shame their colleague Tom Critchlow couldn't have been there too, isn't it, Tom? See your picture, Tom? The rest of you can pay no attention to this nonsense.) Soon after we started swimming, someone British suggested that we might like a drink to go with our training.

My co-worker managed to complete her session, but I was well and truly distracted. I managed a few more lengths, including a 20-metre breaststroke as-fast-as-possible which was more impressive than you'd expect from a two-years' retired, half-bottled search engine geek. With the Pac 10 Swimming Championships currently underway in Southern California, my "training session" reminded me both of how much I enjoyed my swimming career and how glad I am that it's over.

Six Degrees of Separation

2008-02-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

By David

Have you ever heard of the game called "Six Degrees of Separation?" You play it by working out how far removed you are from the world’s famous people, or from anyone, for that matter. For example, I am one degree of separation removed from President Kennedy. One of our Masters swimmers spent his working life managing the affairs of various US Consulates around the world and he met President Kennedy. Thanks to Stuart, I am also only one degree of separation removed from Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson. Fortunately Stuart never met the current President. I also have just one degree of separation from the New Zealand Prime Minister. Evan, a university mate of mine, works in her office.

It is amazing how few steps are required for most of us to be associated with everyone else. Several studies estimate that each person is an average of just six steps away from every other person on the earth. I never thought I’d have any association with the World Trade Center terrorists. However, in my apartment block in Delray Beach, Florida I live on the third floor. On the fifth and top floor, in apartment 1504, Mohammed Attar plotted the events of September 11, 2001. That’s not the kind of close separation I like.

New Zealand is such a small place that it seems I’ve never met another New Zealander who does not know at least one person that I also know. In fact, New Zealanders must be among the world’s most nomadic people. They turn up everywhere. It could be looked on as an awful condemnation of their home country. Thousands of us can’t wait to get away from the place. But I don’t think so. Instead I think it’s a huge compliment that so many of us are out around the world exploring life elsewhere, confident that our home is a pretty good place to go back to should we ever feel the need. There can’t be much wrong with a nation that breeds such a determined group of independent explorers. Compare that to the thousands in Kansas or Ohio who have never ventured more than a hundred miles or so from where they were born and tell me which one suggests a problem.

Here in Delray Beach, I know one other New Zealander, Kevin, whom Barry Crump would certainly consider a "Good Keen Man." He is one of a long line of talented and able Kiwi yachties who race expensive sail boats for rich foreign owners. One of his boats made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald when it struck a rock in Sydney Harbour and sank. He will probably never talk to me again unless I mention that he was not steering at the time.

Eventually, Kevin arrived in the United States, married a very understanding American girl and settled in Delray Beach. Today, Kevin runs a successful home improvement business. His son knows as much about the All Blacks as he does about the NFL. Their home regularly wins the "best lit house in the county" prize at Christmas. But best of all, Kevin remembers the needs of his countrymen. Occasionally he has work to do in the Bahamas. There is a shop there that sells tins of New Zealand’s Anchor butter. Each time Kevin makes the trip he brings me back a tin, knowing that just opening it will bring back all the smells and sights of Taranaki and the Waikato, of guys in Swandris milking a hundred cows before dawn, of muddy gumboots and spotless cow sheds. We’re both here but we haven’t forgotten back there either.

In fact I’m told Kevin was not all that pleased at my lack of concern for New Zealand’s loss to France in the World Rugby Cup. Of course I wanted New Zealand to win but the coach, Graham Henry is not a winning coach; the New Zealander Robbie Deans is a winner, but he coaches the Australians. If that coaching combination stays the same through to the next World Cup, Australia will win; sorry Kevin.

Kevin’s neighbors are members of the Aqua Crest swim team. How’s that for degrees of separation? Their daughter is a very good eleven year old who one day will be good enough to fly off and swim in Europe and other places we like to go. She’s a tough, hard worker and as I’ve told her, she has the advantage of having a New Zealander as her neighbor. Jane, Toni and Nichola each competed for New Zealand in about twenty different countries in their swimming careers. I’m picking that Kevin’s eleven year old neighbor will one day become just like them.

This year, two of the Aqua Crest team are going to the Mare Nostrum series in Monaco, Spain and France. Joe is an ex-USC swimmer and has worked hard to get back into shape after one year away from the sport. Andrew has been doing a Lydiard program for two years and has won a Florida High School Championship and been fourth on three other occasions. They are good guys and I think will enjoy joining that nomadic band of swimmers who, “have suit; will travel."

Your Poopl Does Small

2008-02-23T13:22:00.000-08:00

By David

The title of this item is a quote from one of the unpublished messages received by Swimwatch. What it is supposed to say is, “Your poop does smell – just like everyone else’s”. The author’s English is as suspect as many other qualities revealed by the message. It amazes me, the personal and always anonymous bile that pours forth from some of these unfortunate souls. I don’t know why they bother. Their contribution to the sum of human knowledge is not going to be published. Perhaps they are happy just knowing the subject of their venom has read the stuff they write.

He, or she, is however not alone. For every serious, valued contribution Swimwatch receives, there is one that is an awfully sad reflection on the world inhabited by its author. It would be nice to publish unedited the comments received. Unfortunately, while there are individuals like this out there, we will continue to enable comment moderation.

The “poop does smell” comment was received in reply to my recent Arthur Lydiard article. You may recall that this article’s core point was that a wider acceptance of Lydiard principles might reduce the drop-out rate that is of such concern to the Florida Gold Coast LRC. It should be possible to make that positive suggestion without motivating a torrent of personal attacks. It appears not. I thought you might be interested in some other examples of correspondence received but not published. They too are educational; they provide a frightening insight into the way some of those involved in the sport think.

One writer took the opportunity to attack a swimmer on our team: the “only good swimmer left there is now a one trick pony that is under achieveing.” Far be it from me to criticize others spelling, however for the record, "achieveing" is spelled "achieving." This chap makes so many spelling errors! He should start using the computer’s “spell-check” facility.

Let’s look a bit deeper into what he says: “a one trick pony." That accusation could be leveled at almost every good swimmer. Gary Hall swims the 50 and 100 freestyle. Popov could swim pretty good backstroke but usually restricted himself to 50 and 100 freestyle. You don’t see Grant Hackett swimming much breaststroke or Hansen entering the 1500 freestyle. New Zealand’s best sprinter for a number of years, Nichola Chellingworth, only swam 50 and 100 freestyle and 50 butterfly. Amanda Beard swims a good medley but tends to focus on the 200 breaststroke. There are, of course, Phelps and Hoff who can turn their hand to a wide range of events. Most of the good ones, however, are one trick ponies. Next time this sage contributor meets Gary Hall, I wonder if he will be as liberal with the “one trick pony” label. It would do him well to remember that for most of us the alternative to a one trick pony is “jack of all trades, master of none”.

The under achieving label in this case is a bit harsh. In the last two years the swimmer being referred to has won one Florida State High School Championship and been fourth on three other occasions. His best 50 yards time has improved from 23.43 to 21.25 and his 100 yards from 49.09 to 46.36, that’s 9.3% and 5.6% in two years. I imagine there are a many of us who would welcome that sort of record and improvement even if it was considered by this swimming genius as “under achieving”.

Another comment sent to Swimwatch recently said, “For someone who has now coached in the Forida Gold Coast for OVER 2 years now - what has this the way of training produced?” You see what I mean about the standard of the critic’s English. One can only hope, “No child left behind” does better in the future.

It is a pity this critic does not read my writing about Lydiard’s training more closely. On almost every occasion I make the point that results come slowly; a minimum of four years is required to make the physiological changes required for elite performance. In “Swim to the Top” I put it like this.

“Be very aware however that results in the early seasons may take longer to show than aggressively sprint trained competitors. Build up conditioning is not the fastest way of achieving fine results. In fact it is often quite slow. It is however the best way to achieve the best results.”

The critic’s quote brilliantly illustrates the point I was trying to make in the Lydiard article. Clearly, “OVER 2 years” is considered ample time. Abject failure can be the only appropriate description of two years of modest improvement. There is little wonder that Florida has its share of teenage drop outs when idiots like this consider two years to be an extended and relevant time period in which to achieve athletic success. Thank you for the illustration.

Incidentally, in the two years he refers to, this team has grown from ten swimmers to eighty, has had two Florida State High School Champions and several other finalists, two National Masters Champions and several other finalists, three National qualifiers and a bunch of juniors who love the sport. Our critics describe this as failure but we are pleased with our steady and modest progress.

It is difficult to understand the motives and intellect that produces the mindless animosity in some of these emails. I suggest that before they press the send button in future they consider whether their efforts are making a contribution and even then, pause for one more moment and turn on the “spell-check” facility.

Lydiard and Relevance

2008-02-16T20:18:00.000-08:00

By David

I’m pleased to see Lorraine Moller is doing a lecture tour of New Zealand in support of the Lydiard method of coaching. New Zealand needs it; so does the United States. Unfortunately her message will probably fall on deaf ears. There are none so deaf as those who choose not to hear.

But first, who is Lorraine Moller? Well she was a pretty good runner. She represented New Zealand in four Olympic Games and won a Bronze Medal in the Marathon in the 1992 Barcelona Games. She also won the prestigious Osaka Marathon three times and the London Marathon once. Today she lives and coaches in Boulder, Colorado.

This is how Athletics New Zealand described the purpose of Lorraine’s lecture tour:

“Moller’s visit will be especially pertinent as she has recently expressed concern about a decline in interest in New Zealand in the coaching principles of legendary New Zealand athletics coach Arthur Lydiard. Moller, the co-founder of the Lydiard Foundation in the United States, wishes to renew affirmation of Lydiard’s methods and demonstrate a fresh 21st century application of them. She will call on her own extensive coaching experiences of the Lydiard way.”

The highly regarded American “Runner” magazine described Lorraine’s message like this.

“Lydiard disagreed that in order to get faster the runner must tackle interval training from the early stages. He saw this as more of a quick-fix strategy that, in the long haul, only results in injury. Instead, Lydiard emphasized easy miles first, combined with aerobic threshold training runs, to increase the body’s ability to access and metabolize oxygen. The stronger a runner becomes, the higher the aerobic threshold. Reaching anaerobic states at this phase in training is counterproductive to producing speed. As Moller comically illustrates, interval training early on is "like putting fast wheels on a Volkswagen. You’re better off with slow tires on a Mercedes. With the Lydiard system you can have both."

Her message is a valid one. In both New Zealand and the United States, swimming is full of interval training junkies and coaches who value the quick fix. The casualty rate is horrendous. Twelve year olds are battered by the burden of a dozen 400 IMs for time and bruised by a score of descending 100s. The Florida Gold Coast Swimming region recently spent a valuable portion of its Annual Meeting discussing the vast numbers dropping out of the sport in their teenage years. Perhaps Lorraine could swing through Florida on her way home. Her message would be relevant to their concern.

The United States gets away with it because it has a limitless number of young people it can throw at the problem. Eventually, a Phelps survives and beats the world. It’s been called the broken egg method of coaching. If a million eggs are throw at a wall most will break and fall to the ground. One, however, will survive. That one will be an Olympic Champion. New Zealand, however, does not have the resource (or the eggs) of the United States. It’s the same in track & field. I see that the Women’s 800 meters at the Sylvia Potts track meet in New Zealand last week was won in 2.13. Alison Wright and Lorraine Moller were ten seconds faster than that thirty years ago. But then, they trained the Lydiard way.

All this is relevant just now to our small team in Delray Beach, Florida. Last week was the tenth and last week of the Lydiard aerobic conditioning build-up in preparation for the 2008 summer season. It has been a long haul, ten weeks of seven days, ten weeks of 100,000 meters, ten weeks of long steady swims, ten weeks of health benefits that will last a lifetime, ten weeks of making sure swimmer’s careers are long and prosperous.

Here is what Lydiard wrote in his Introduction to my first book on swimming, “Swim to the Top”.

“As in many sports several years are needed to gain the top possible results in swimming. David has patiently followed my advice. It has been both a challenge and a pleasure to me to have to have been part of that winning development”

Thank you, Arthur. Your message is a tough one, but the challenge, education and pleasure has been ours as well.

Do You Google? (Or Facebook, Flickr and Myspace)

2008-02-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

By Jane

What do you hide from your coaches? Everyone hides some things. You pretend that you're tired from Friday's practice when you're struggling on Saturday morning, even though you were really out until late the night before. The mild case of food poisoning was actually induced by vodka. In most cases, you'd never tell you coach a thing. I may have, back my day. My club coach, with whom many of you are quite familiar, would have laughed, told me my ills were entirely of my own making and would have stuck with whatever fun schedule he'd composed. He would have teased me about my self-imposed suffering during intervals. Honestly, I'd rather be teased and be honest. Humour always makes training go by faster.

However, most of you hide things. There's nothing surprising about that, but I have to ask you: do you hide things well?

If you're into swimming and have a presence on the Internet, you probably don't. There is no reason why you should feel safe in the knowledge that you privatised your Facebook profile or MySpace page. Security-obsessed Facebook is more full of more privacy holes than the eternally-broken MySpace. I will demonstrate what I mean by this in a moment.

Do you have a blog or an online journal? Do your friends? What about a Flickr account? Do you know what ends up on the Internet, tagged with your name, featuring your face? And can your coach work a search engine?

Most of my swimming friends use various online services and they disclose a lot of information about their lives. Many of them are smart about what they post, making sure that nothing untoward is exposed to anyone, strangers and search engines included. However, some of them part with an incredible amount of sensitive information in full view of the public, Google, Yahoo, Live Search, Technorati, and a multitude of other services.

Facebook is, and always has been, a walled garden. If you have never used the site, here is what I mean: you cannot view the majority of the site's content unless you have a Facebook account and are signed into the service. Even if I wanted to show the world my profile, I couldn't. This is my public profile. You have to be signed into the site and either be a person's friend or be in their network in order to see more information about them. In my case, you have to be my "friend."

When you're signed into your Facebook account, you can specify privacy settings that disallow anyone but your designated friends from viewing the profile. If you choose to make your profile public to people within the same "networks" at you on Facebook, you can prevent people who aren't you friends from seeing certain parts of your profile. Additionally, you can even block some of your friends from seeing things within your profile as well. This is a sweet feature if your boss, coach, parent, ex-boyfriend, etc, becomes your online friend and yet you don't want to show them absolutely everything.

But what you can't account for is the privacy settings of other people. I'm focusing on Facebook here because that's my online hangout of choice. I have profiles at Bebo and MySpace that I rarely use. Facebook, on the other hand, acts as my social network, my event planner, my photo album, my bookmarking service (StumbleUpon aside. Hi Stumblers!), my instant messenger and my socially-focused email inbox. Suffice to say, I have a Facebook problem and need help. But I digress: Being an early adopter of Facebook, I know what I'm talking about when I say that your privacy settings at Facebook mean less than you think.

While I doubt that most swim coaches know their way around social networks yet, it won't take long before coaches can do more than just "Google" your name. (Warning: if Yahoo is their search engine of choice and dodgy pictures of you have turned up on Flickr, you're in trouble.) Since Facebook opened its doors to people who do not have university-affiliated email addresses in September 2006, there is nothing stopping your swim coaches from creating a profile there and potentially accessing your information.

"But," you say. "I know how to use Facebook. I went to my privacy page and I specified that no one aside from my friends can see my profile. I also disallowed search engines from finding my public profile, like the one you've linked to above. In fact, just to be on the safe side, I blocked people from even searching for my name or seeing my listing in my friends' profiles! You're wrong: Facebook's privacy settings are impenetrable."

Not so. It's true that Facebook is bloody fantastic at letting you control what you show people of your information. However, what of your friends whose profiles are open like 24 Hour Fitness? All of their pictures, including pictures of you, are available to anyone who wishes to see them. Not only that, but if one of your friends comments on one of your pictures, anyone who visits their profile can look through all the pictures in the album which they made a comment about, even if your profile and information is set to the highest level of security. Yeah. That bit was in bold. It doesn't matter how many privacy features you've enabled, this holds true.

Do you know who can see these pictures? Potentially: everyone

So take this situation: Your friend is a Freshman at the college you're desperate to attend. She is on the swim team and is Facebook-friends with the coach. This isn't as uncommon as you'd think: I was Facebook-friends with one of my coaches during college.

You upload pictures that the college coach wouldn't approve of, but you're okay! Your profile isn't visible to anyone but your friends. Your Freshman friend comments on some of your pictures and her college coach visits her profile. He or she sees your friend's comments and clicks through to the pictures. Due to this particular Facebook security hole, the coach can click through all the pictures in your album, which could number as many as sixty. That is the maximum number of pictures that Facebook will allow in one album.

Personally, I find it unfortunate that swimmers have to hide their social lives. If I were a coach, I'd like to think that my swimmers know how to have a good time, but I'm weird like that and I'll never be a coach. However, the status quo is that college coaches don't like it when college swimmers engage in college-esque activities, like drinking, partying, dressing up in silly clothes and generally making arses of themselves. They find it even more unappetising when high schoolers engage in similar activities. And don't preach "the drinking age" at me. I have a doctrine of bile to spew about that which you really don't want to hear.

Basically, we're stuck in a situation where people have to hide their activities from their elders. It's kind of fun to to be in my position, where I don't have to worry about what a potential coach may think anymore. I'm also now a member of an industry where the consumption of alcohol isn't exactly frowned upon. But I do remember deliberately censoring the pictures I put up on Facebook for fear only of coaches and college athletics administrators coming across the pictures and disapproving of my conduct. That I was over 21 (and, of course, 18) and not breaking the law in any way didn't matter: I had to be careful. And many of my peers are not nearly as careful as I was.

Recently, I saw a friend of mine express to another friend that she "hated" their coach. (This is not on a team of which I was ever a member.) The girl in question also stated that she was going to quit come the end of the swim season and hoped other swimmers would do the same. She also said that she hadn't yet told the coach that she was going to quit.

I was dumbstruck. Out of curiosity, I signed out of the social network I was using (not Facebook) and went to see if this conversation was available if one was not "friends" with either party. Let's just say that if this coach knows how to use the Internet and is at all interested in the online dealings of his (her? Not telling) swimmers, (s)he already knows this information, plus a whole lot more.

Abstinence-only isn't going to help here, so even if I were a fan of such education (which I'm not), I'd not endorse it here. I'm not going to tell you to behave like a saint and stay off the Internet as a guarantee that everything will be all right. You're allowed to have a good time every now and then, and you can't help what your friends upload to the Internet. Aside from making sure you're not involved in any truly scandalous stories or photos that might end up online, the only thing you can do is protect yourself as well as you can.

Find out if your friends privatise their profiles. On Facebook, "untag" yourself in pictures of which you aren't proud. Don't upload pictures that you'd not want others to see. If you must share the pictures on Facebook, delete friends' comments on pictures, due to the aforementioned security hole. Remeber that when it comes to services like Flickr, you can't control what friends upload, and that you can't control whether or not they assign your name to certain photographs. Again, Flickr pictures rank very well at Yahoo because Yahoo owns Flickr. If Microsoft ends up acquiring Yahoo (despite today's rejection of Microsoft's bid), Flickr pictures may well end up ranking well at MSN / Live, too.

In the coming years, coaches will increasingly use the Internet to research potential team members and scholarship recipients. Take advantage of the online attention you may receive by managing your reputation through services like BeRecruited.com (although you might want to check out some of the problems I found with that service as well).

Be careful about what you upload to social networking sites.

And take action, as opposed to being defensive! Start a blog. Create a website. How would you like to dominate the search results pages for a search for your name? Take a page out of high school softball player Lauren Boser's book and be proactive about your online identity. Neglecting to take care of yourself in the Internet may cost you an education, but this is almost completely within your control. In my industry, we call it reputation management. I suggest you give it a a Google :)

Master Swimming Is Fantastic

2008-02-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

By David

Isn’t master’s swimming a great part of the sport? Our team has a prosperous and growing section. There are about forty swimmers, which isn’t too bad considering there were none three years ago. I enjoy coaching them. Swimming gets mixed up with healthy debates about politics: they know I support the US having its first woman President. We talk about NFL results and we all agree the Giants did well.

Our group is an interesting assortment. There’s Darcy of course. Swimwatch have already written about her. You may remember she was the one who went off to holiday in the Greek Isles the year she finished High School and fell in love with the heir to a Greek shipping empire. Darcy called her understanding mother and pleaded successfully for the holiday to be extended by a week. And things have never been the same since. This year Darcy has qualified as an Assistant Coach. It means both our Assistant Coaches are current national champions or record holders. I’m beginning to feel vastly under-qualified. Darcy is preparing for the summer’s open water championships and is shaping up well. She swam 10x400 on 7.00 minutes last night and was under 6.00 minutes for the lot. In 2007 she was second in that “distance-swum-in-training contest” run by the US Master’s Swimming organization. For those of you who want to beat her this year, you will need to plan on swimming more than 1700 miles.

Then there is Bob and Bonnie. They are husband and wife. Bob’s a retired doctor and has a lethal sense of humor. Bonny is very understanding. Bob’s a national champion. He won the 100 breaststroke at the Seattle Nationals in 2007. Bonnie was third in the 50, 100 and 200 backstroke at the same meet. Both of them are forever laughing at my effort to stay fit by walking the five miles home from the pool in the morning. Bob believes the walk would be best interrupted by breakfast at a local pancake bar. Any of you who have experienced American pancake breakfasts will understand the negative health effect of that idea; and from a doctor too.

Steve is an interesting and surprising master’s swimmer. He’s a very quiet sort of guy and could barely swim a length when he arrived a year ago. Now he swims confidently through 4000 meter sessions. It turns out this quiet, unassuming chap has a PhD in some form of chemistry and lower degree qualifications in all those similar and difficult subjects. His training is being interrupted all the time with trips to Washington DC to give advice to the nation’s law makers on what we should all eat. His IQ must be double the number of most mere mortals. He supports Hillary and Obama and is in love with a sporty rotary engine Mazda that he races at a local track on a Thursday night. The story of Steve’s very first airplane ride is interesting. It was the ride he did up to 2800 feet to jump out of the plane for his first parachute jump; unbelievable.

Then there’s Jeremy. He must be in his mid twenties and is already a deep sea captain for anything that floats and is under one hundred tons. Oh, and he’s also a commercial airplane pilot. His dad flew for Delta. Once again, he’s quiet. Isn’t it true? The really talented never seem to feel the need to tell you about their achievements.

I’d better not forget to mention Sherrill. She’d be the life and soul of any party. She was married to one of America’s largest dealers in exotic cars. In those days her Chevy was spelled Lamborghini, her Dodge was red and had a black stallion badge. Her sister has just been to New Zealand with one of the Cabot-Lodges. They visited native tree places down in New Zealand’s South Island. From what I’ve heard New Zealand is all the better for their sort of foreign investment; thank you from one of the natives. However, there is a problem with Sherrill’s swimming. She’s one of those very delicate lady-like swimmers; nice to look at but not all that effective. I’ve suggested everything, nothing seems to work!

That tells you a little bit about six of our forty masters. They are a great bunch. They make it fun to go to the pool in the morning. I’ll let you know about some of the others another time.

Kathy Jackson's Comment

2008-02-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

By David

A couple of days ago, Swimwatch received an comment from Kathy Jackson. Her thoughts were in response to the Swimwatch article, “Show us the Rule”. You may remember it. We argued that swimmers were being disqualified for starting block movements that were not false starts. Swimmers were being disqualified wrongly. When that happens it is a blight on a young athlete’s swimming career.

Here is Kathy Jackson’s comment, originally posted on our article titles, "Where is the Rule."

“My name is Kathy Jackson, I have been a Texas UIL certified official for 5 years, I am also a USA certified as a starter and stroke/turn official, and I am NCAA certified. I am the Central Regional Director for the College Swimming's Officials Association. We have had a similar problem at our District meets involving a particular starter. I contacted the National office this morning to see how to go about requesting a rule change. I was informed that the request had to come from the state board. I have sent the following request to our state president.

I was the meet referee this weekend at the District 13 Championship meet here in College Station. We had an incident during the meet in which a swimmer was disqualified by the starter and deck referee (not me) for false start due to a foot twitch after the swimmers had been told to "take your mark" but before the starting horn sounded. We had a similar incidence with this same starter, 2 years ago.

In every event where I was the starter, if there was any movement, I would either stand the swimmers or slightly hold off on the horn until all movement had ceased. I do this at all meets, both high school, USA and College. Both USA and NCAA rules do not use the word "motionless" in their rules regarding starts instead the word "stationary" is used. I would like to request a rule change in high school swimming of Rules 8.1.1; 8.1.3 to reflect consistency with NCAA and USA rules. If there is a certain form that needs to be completed, I would be happy to fill it out.

If there are any questions that you have, please feel free to contact me.

Kathy Jackson

Cell 979-777-4217”

You will not be surprised to see that Kathy’s arguments are more reasoned and less strident than those made by Swimwatch. However there is a commonality of purpose. In the United States right now, swimmers are being disqualified for starting block movements which do not constitute false starts. Swimmers who could stand on their marks until next Christmas are being disqualified, simply because they moved their leg, their head, their arm or the pinky toe on their left foot. And that is not reason enough for a disqualification.

It is comparable to the disastrous judging that used to go on in New Zealand when the backstroke turn was first changed to a non-hand touch turn. There was no uniformity; swimmers were being disqualified in one place for exactly the same turn that was fine somewhere else. It was a shambles. Officials held seminar after seminar and still couldn’t get it right. Getting through a backstroke race was less a matter of good swimming than good luck.

Shortly after the backstroke turn rules were changed, Toni Jeffs placed second in the New Zealand Short Course Championships in the 50m backstroke. During the race, she did the worst, non-continuous, kick-like-mad-into-the-wall turn you'd ever have the misfortune of seeing. And do you know what: not a thing was done about it. She bloody well got away with it. To this day I’m not sure whether the official was scared to disqualify Toni Jeffs, or was confused after attending her fifth backstroke turn seminar.

The Toni story illustrates the inconsistencies of the time. Toni benefited, but hundreds of others got the rough end of the judging stick.

Yesterday’s backstroke turn is today’s start. Officials have a bee-in-their-bonnets about minor movements and are disqualifying swimmers when they shouldn’t. A movement does not mean a false start and should not be judged as such. It is obviously time for another seminar.

Email From America

2008-01-24T19:02:00.000-08:00

By David

This week, the United States is in the middle of deciding who will represent the Republican and Democratic Parties in the contest to elect the next President. One does not need to have studied Political Science for long to know all is not well with American democracy. Plato first described democracy as the system of “rule by the governed” where ordinary citizens elected their governors. Nothing wrong with that you might think. However Plato forgot to mention that citizens did not include women, non-land owners or slaves. Of Athens’ 250,000 adult inhabitants only about 5000 were allowed to do the voting. We certainly would not consider that state of affairs to be democratic today.

But, like anything made by man, democracy is capable of being altered and improved by man. In particular democracy began to mean a much wider franchise and protected minority rights. For example, no one today would consider a nation to be democratic that denied women the vote or insisted that only Baptists could elect a government. Some of you may not know that New Zealand proudly lead democracy forward by being the first country to give women the vote.

Probably the single most significant transition in the character of democracy is the attention given to ensuring minorities are represented in government. It is called proportional representation and aims at matching the percentage of votes that special interests obtain in elections with the seats they receive in the legislature. In 2007 the Economist magazine produced a list of the most democratic countries in the world. The top nations, Sweden, New Zealand, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, all practice versions of proportional representation.

The United States is seventeenth on the Economist’s list. I do not want to hear anybody say, “That’s not too bad.” In Olympic terms, American democracy does not even make it to the semi-finals. American democracy was eliminated in the morning heats. Why? Because unless you join the Democratic or Republican Parties there is zero chance of you becoming President or being elected to the Senate or Congress. It is of course theoretically possible, but practically, there’s no chance. An independent observer could be excused for describing democracy here as a two party dictatorship. The foresight and vision of Plato would have seen him promote a very different version of democracy were he alive today. I like to think that the foresight and vision of Jefferson and Madison would have resulted in a very different constitution had they been writing it today. I wonder if Washington DC today has any Platos or Jeffersons or Madisons. American democracy is in need of their perception.

While American democracy may be in need of some improvement, this week saw a development that bodes well for life in America and for Florida in particular. I have lived here for six years. In that time I have witnessed a million things this nation does extremely well. I have visited the Kennedy Space Center and wondered at the technology that produced the Saturn rocket and the space Shuttle. I have been to three National Swimming Championships and am in awe at the depth of talent on display. The list is endless of events and scenes. I can listen to Elvis 24/7 on SIRIUS. I can drink Coke, the soda that taught the world to sing. I can wonder at the humbling generosity Americans at Christmas. But let me tell you one thing this nation can not do. No one can make proper “fish-and-chips”.

I don’t know what goes wrong. The fish is too thin, the batter is not crispy enough, there’s no vinegar, it’s the wrong species of fish or maybe it’s all of the above. I don’t know, but in 2190 days of looking I’ve never found a decent British, Australian, New Zealand feed of fish-and-chips.

Until today; the parent’s of one off our better swimmers (their daughter is 11 and has averaged 40 kilometers a week over the past 7 weeks of aerobic conditioning) called me to say that on Delray Beach’s main street, Atlantic Avenue, in the Blue Anchor Tavern they had found real British fish-and-chips. They would, they said, bring me a dinner to the pool. I could try them for myself. Yea right, I thought; another limp offering of tasteless fish and soggy chips.

Ten minutes later they arrived, clearly delighted with their find. I joined in, but I knew that these kind and generous Americans jubilant as they might be, they really had no idea. Asking them to pass judgment on fish-and-chips was akin to asking me to rustle up a new formula depicting nuclear fission. I thanked them and carried the offering home.

It looked real enough, but I’d seen that before. The taste would be different. From the first bite I knew; America had taken on another challenge and had triumphed. This is a truly great country. Someone here in Delray Beach can make real British fish-and-chips. I feel a little emotional just talking about it. If the fish-and-chip frontier has been crossed, if this test has been passed, why should I worry? Revitalizing America’s democracy will soon follow.

The Tiniroto Hunt

2008-01-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

By David

The last article Jane wrote for Swimwatch was about the end of her swimming career. What she didn’t tell you, because I kept the statistics, was that she competed for eleven years. In that time she swam 27,548 kilometers (17,218 miles). Excluding holidays that was an average distance of 53.28 kilometers (33.30 miles) per week for 517 weeks. She normally averaged 14 strokes per length which means her arms completed about 15 and a half million strokes in the eleven years. I was pleased to see in her Swimwatch article that she complained only of a sore hip.

In the same years she lifted weights on 1522 occasions. She lifted 7914 tonnes, which, for those of you who have trouble imagining that weight, is the equivalent of one 747 aircraft every two months for eleven years. As I said, I was pleased to see she complained only of a sore hip.

With that work load you can appreciate that there is little time for modern swimmers to indulge in other sports. That was not always the case. In the sixties and seventies we swam, played a little rugby or soccer, ran cross country and took part in the Tiniroto Hunt.

The Tiniroto Hunt tried very hard to emulate the fox hunting traditions of our ancestors; a pack of hounds, scarlet coated horsemen, trumpet calls, the cry of “tally-ho” and polished leather bridles and saddles. No effort was spared to faithfully copy the sport’s British heritage. Unfortunately in New Zealand, one fairly important ingredient to a successful fox hunt was missing. You see, in New Zealand there are no foxes. Instead our hounds hunted down unfortunate rabbits and hares.

I rode in the Tiniroto Hunt. My horse Nehaw was not as impressive as some of the fine steeds owned by the well-off Tiniroto farmers. However, Nehaw could run fast and was a sure-footed beast, crucial qualities for a successful hunt. The night before a hunt, Nehaw’s mangy coat was clipped into a sleek pattern and his tail and mane braided and combed.

I also needed to prepare. Carefully laid out in my room was a black Harry Hall velvet riding hat, riding boots, crop and breeches all bought from the saddler across the road from the Mahia lighthouse in Wairoa. My jacket was bought from Williams and Kettles three or four doors up from the saddler. It looked close to a formal hunting coat, but wasn’t. By midnight I was ready to go.

At six in the morning our club gathered in a frosty field on Dave Berry’s farm and waited for the hounds to pick up a scent; the older club members were already sipping Scotland’s national drink from expensive silver flasks. Eventually the hounds found and ran howling after a scent. With absolute faith in their expertise and honesty we set off in pursuit. At this point I must admit to you that Nehaw knew far more about what to do than I did. As long as I stayed fixed in the saddle he had an uncanny knack of finding the lowest fences to jump and the shortest routes to maintain contact with the speeding dogs.

On more than one occasion I almost left the saddle as Nehaw decided to change direction without warning the driver. I can remember falling only once when Nehaw galloped at full speed down a beautiful smooth slope towards an open gate. A most unfortunate gust of wind swung the gate closed as we reached the opening. Nehaw did the sensible thing and stopped. I did not. In fact I cleared the closed gate at some speed and with several feet to spare.

After galloping around for fifteen minutes or so, the hounds caught the rabbit and quickly murdered the poor animal. I remember clearly the ritual of my first hunt. The Hunt Master said a few solemn words. Blood from the first kill was painted on my cheeks and one of the rabbit’s feet was given to me as recognition that I was not longer a virgin in the hunting business. I kept that foot for years.

Once the first rabbit was killed we waited to do the same thing again and again and again. I sometimes thought we only gave up when the amount of whiskey consumed put the hunt’s older members in danger of falling off their horses at a gentle walk. Nehaw enjoyed the whole experience far more than I did. He was clearly disappointed when it was time to head for home. Usually I couldn’t wait to get home. I don’t know how many of you have done much riding. But let me assure you there is always a buckle somewhere that finds a bit to chaff.

I’m not sure why I went back to each hunt. Perhaps like Jane who swam because that’s what she did. The Tiniroto Hunt was there and that’s what I did. I had more time than her. I didn’t swim 53.28 kilometers every week.

Every Swimmer's Most Feared Decision: Knowing When to Quit

2007-12-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

By Jane

When I was a swimmer, the idea of quitting was rather horrible. It has been eighteen months since I last stashed my Fastskin suit in the back of a wardrobe and made my decision not to race again and it was a far easier choice than I'd imagined it would be.

I quit swimming at midday on March 18, 2006. I hadn't planned on it, but that was the way it panned out. In the morning, I swam in the preliminaries of the 200 yard breaststroke at the NCAA Championships in Athens, Georgia. I didn't do all that well: I think my time was 2:16.1, but I don't remember exactly. My best time was, and still is, 2:14.92. My first 100 yards was a 1:04 and things went downhill from there. I'd done all right on the first day of the championships, competing in the 200 IM and recording a time only slightly slower than my best. I wasn't much of an IMer and had snuck into the 200 IM with a B-cut.

I'm being totally honest here, which is strange for me because I've never liked being painfully honest about swimming. For most of my life, swimming validated my existence. An insult to my swimming was a strike right at the heart of who I was. It was as though I had nothing else. Quite honestly, I didn't really care about swimming anymore when I finally quit. I think I stopped caring about swimming on November 20, 2005, when I qualified for NCAAs. My 2:14.92, swum at the University of Minnesota, wasn't fast enough to guarantee my place in the NCAA Championships, but it was good enough that I was 99% sure I'd be going down to Georgia in March. In hindsight, that was enough for me. I was getting close to graduation and hadn't swum a personal best time in the 200 breaststroke since February 2003. Recording a best time in Minnesota was like a gift from heaven.

That swim, in my opinion, made up for a lot of the work and stress and agony I'd gone through. At that point, I started to wind down. Should I have maintained the motivation to swim a 2:13 or a 2:12 at NCAAs? Sure I should have. But now, I finally have the balls to admit that I lost a certain amount of interest once I knew I'd made it to NCAAs. A week before I went to college, I'd expressed the excitement I felt about competing at the NCAA Champs to a fellow swimmer in New Zealand. "Well," she'd said. "That's if you make it."

Finally, I had made it, damnit. However, mentally exhausted and reaching the pinnacle of my physical ability, I'd had about as much as I could handle.

I swam that NCAA preliminary race and got dressed. I doubt I even swam in the warm down pool. A personal best time would have made it back for a night time swim. My time did not. I went out to lunch with my mother and got a bit drunk. We were drinking red wine. I just stated talking and I couldn't stop. My mother was a runner - a very accomplished runner who represented Great Britain and New Zealand at numerous international competitions. She still holds the New Zealand record over 1000 metres. She understood what I was doing and where I was coming from: I had to talk to someone, but most importantly, I had to talk to myself about how I was done with a sport I'd taken part in since I was six years old. I had to convince myself that it was okay to quit and that I wasn't a complete loser for calling "Time" on something that (I thought) made me who I was.

Now, I can't type "goggles" properly. My fingers always type Google, which is indicative of how my life and my career have changed. I now work in search engine optimisation and Internet marketing. There was life after swimming and I needn't have feared "retirement", a term I dislike as it's used far too liberally by people who shy away from the word "quit." I am not ashamed to use the Q word and I don't want anyone else to be, either. Knowing when to quit is just as important as toughing it out.

That the end of my swimming career coincided with the end of my college scholarship and undergraduate education was fortunate. However, not given the financial incentive, I probably would have stopped a little earlier. The "high note" to have gone out on would have been after Minnesota. I always told myself that I'd quit after I believed I'd become as good as I was ever going to get. A combination of factors meant that I was not going to get any better. The first factor was that, despite being born with an injury-free spoon in my mouth, I was beginning to suffer from more and more frequent strains in my legs. Not being able to complete a proper breaststroke kick is a big hindrance to swimming good breaststroke and the 200 breast was the only event in which I was ever really competitive.

I'm not trying to encourage anyone to quit, but I wanted to write this for people who want an out but are scared. I know why you're scared. You're scared of ridicule from those you leave behind. There is a stigma around leaving the sport. Swimming is all-encompassing activity and when you're immersed in it, you really believe that it is the only thing that makes your life worthwhile. You hear people talk badly about people who have quit. You are scared about what they'll say about you. Don't be.

It doesn't matter. Once you leave a sport, you must realise that what you left behind ceases to be of any importance. I am getting ahead of myself, but it's an important point to remember when you're wondering how people will react to your retirement. You may have lived with these people, breathing swimming like it was precious air during a breathing control set, for years. But once you're done, their opinions on your swimming don't mean anything to you.

Another thing you may be worried about is finding something to take swimming's place. What do you do with that time? More importantly, what do you do with that energy? For me, the energy question was taken care of with running. I found my dream job in order to take care of the extra time. However, the overriding problem is finding something to define yourself. This won't be a problem for everyone, but it was for me. I had very little self-confidence when I was younger (despite my best efforts to pretend otherwise), but getting better at swimming helped me feel good about myself.

That afternoon in Georgia, I was worried that giving up swimming would result in me giving up a big chunk of my confidence and identity. In actuality, I found that my choice relieved me of a huge burden. Instead of being lost and unsure like I thought I'd be, I could look back on everything I'd done and view it as a whole. It was over, and I could be confident and proud of what I'd done, without worrying about what I still had to do.

All swimmers have at least a small fear of quitting. While there is no guarantee that everyone's exit from the sport will go as well as mine, there is little to be afraid of. Your life isn't rendered unimportant once you're done swimming. You don't cease to exist. What of those whom you left behind who may have you believe otherwise? Honestly, you'll forget those snarky poolside discussions about teammates-past in the same way you'll forget the pain of timed swims, test sets and bad meets. The greatest thing about quitting swimming is that the good memories stay as good and the bad memories fade. I still remember the elation and ecstasy of my swim in Minnesota, just like I remember all the good swims and hard-fought achievements. The horrible practices and dismal performances are distant recollections.

No one can tell an athlete when to stop and many go on too long. Save for the most dense participants, most of us know when our time is up. Do not quit just because you're about to graduate, turn 18, turn 21, change jobs or do any number of things that constitute a change in your life. Quit because it's time. Swimming isn't the safety net you think it is, and you'll find that you're more than capable of making something of yourself without a pool, a workout and championship to work towards. The "real world" is pretty awesome. Never be afraid to go out and take a look.

We Endorse

2007-12-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

By David

Swimwatch is about to embark on a swimming website first. We are going to offer our endorsement of two candidates in general elections about to take place.

If this is not a first then we apologize. It’s just that we have never seen Swim Info or Swimnews or Timed Finals or Texas Swimming hold their hand up and say vote for Bill Smith, he’s our man. There is no reason why they shouldn’t. In fact there is every reason why they should. Swimming is as much affected by who’s running the country as any other activity. If you find that hard to understand, consider this. Was Title Nine political? Did it affect swimming in the USA? And in New Zealand: is the distribution of pokie machine profits political? Does it affect swimming in New Zealand?

It seems silly that swimming websites get all hot and bothered over performance enhancing drugs, the timetable for heats and finals at the next Olympics and where some swimmer is now training and, yet run shy from offering an opinion on who should run the country. Politicians show no such reluctance. When it suits them they dive headlong into the question of drugs in sport and think nothing of using the Olympics to try to get the Russians out of Afghanistan. Well if politicians are prepared to meddle in our patch it is entirely appropriate we should meddle back.

In the United States, one Swimwatch contributor endorses Hillary Clinton. She’s experienced, tough, able, and intelligent. She’s been a fine senator for New York. There’d be no nonsense in the Oval Office with Hillary in charge. But her ability and experience are not the principal reasons for our support. We are disgusted by the sexist bile of her opponents; for example Chris Mathews of MSNBC. He’s turned his nightly Hardball program into an anti-Hillary, anti-woman rant. It’s the worst we’ve heard since Fred Dagg called his girl friend a “grouse looking sheila”. Gender should never be a factor in deciding who is going to be President. But, while there are chauvinists like Mathews out there, it would do him and the USA a power of good to have a woman in charge. Swimwatch's editor is backing Barack Obama so felt it necessary to mention him in this post, even though it was written by the Clinton faction. Still, since we still do not know who will gain the Democratic nomination, much of this debate is academic, at best.

Bedroom and kitchen bigots like Mathews are intent on keeping women out of the Oval Office. They just cannot abide the thought that there is a woman out there who’s tougher than them. While Hillary’s campaign carefully tries to avoid the gender card, Mathews and the boys are smacking her as hard as they can with every gender stereotype. You should have heard him tonight showering cheap shots on Hillary because she had husband Bill out there on the stump. In Mathews’ eyes Bill was protecting the little woman. The men candidates meanwhile were reported as having loyal wives supporting their warrior husbands. Mathews is pathetic.

Well, 60% of the participants in swimming are women. Hillary is worth a vote even if it is only to show this 60% that achieving anything, even the White House, is possible. She is also worth a vote to show to the 40% of participants that are male that they cannot treat women the way Mathews does and expect to get away with it. Is that a sexist reason for voting? Yes it is, and it’s a bloody good one as well! Oh, and along the way, the US gets a good President.

In New Zealand Swimwatch endorses the current Prime Minister, Helen Clark. Forbes magazine says she is the 38^th most powerful woman in the world. She’s been the Prime Minister of New Zealand for eight years and has done an exceptional job. The place is fairly humming along. Unemployment is at a twenty year low of 3.5%. A week ago the government announced a record surplus of $NZ11.5 billion for the 2006 year. Financially, what Bill Clinton managed to achieve in the USA, Helen Clarke has done in New Zealand. Isn’t it strange how all the stuffed shirt conservatives accuse liberals like Bill and Helen of having no fiscal responsibility, when it’s their poster boys like George Bush who start wars that spend their country into insolvency. For fiscal management there’s not much wrong with Helen’s record.

She hasn’t been everything we might have wanted for sport. Athlete’s civil liberties have been put at risk by the legislation passed by Helen Clark’s Government sharply increasing the power of the New Zealand drug agency. Her Government founded and financed the formation of a sport’s funding agency called SPARC. Since its birth that agency has been responsible for a steady decline in the health of New Zealand sport. Lydiard said it would happen and it has. This year alone New Zealand has lost the rugby World Cup, the netball World Cup and the America’s Cup. To be fair to Helen Clark, she has put her hand in her pocket and given sport a heap of money. She has received some pretty awful advice on how to spend it.

Unfortunately we here at Swimwatch can’t vote in either the New Zealand or USA elections. If we could, Hillary and Helen would get our votes.

Swimming at Ten Thousand Feet

2007-11-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

By David

I enjoy flying for the same reason I enjoy swimming. From the moment you ease back on the controls or dive into a pool there is a peerless sense of involvement with one of nature’s elements. There is isolation, there is contentment and there is the busy effort of trying to do this thing just a little bit better than last time. I don’t know whether the multi-thousand hour airline pilots see it that way, but for a one thousand hour amateur, that’s the way it is for me.

Like swimming, flying produces an endless archive of stories. I don’t do it anymore, but when I first learned to fly, I spent most Sunday evenings in the Aero Club bar listening to the old timers tell stories about airplanes. I learned as much in that bar as I did, with Warwick, flying around Palmerston North airport. Every conceivable “what would you do if” was debated long into drunken and senseless nights. In severe turbulence, was hand flying or the automatic pilot better? Forced landings over a pine forest, in a stormy sea or along a rocky river were debated and never agreed upon. At the time, all my landings - even on Palmerston’s wide and long runway - were pretty forced. Little did I know how valuable those aero club debates would one day become.

One evening I was flying from Wellington to Rotorua. That’s about 235 miles. A bit passed half way, over a town called Taihape, you cross over some rugged country. Only real men live in Taihape. There must be women there too but they don’t get brought into the conversation much. Taihape is famous as the home of an annual Gumboot Throwing Championship. A small road behind the main street is permanently cordoned off for those wanting to practice gumboot throwing. It is every New Zealander’s shame that the world record just now is held by Jouni Viljanen of Finland with 64 meters and 35 centimeters.

As I flew high over Taihape on my way to Rotorua, a local farmer took off from his farm airstrip and came on the radio to file an in-flight flight plan. He said he was “off to Wanganui (about 65 miles) to do some shopping”. I’m sure air traffic control needed that information. When he was finished, the patient controller asked, “How many people are on board.” “Well,” came the carefully thought out reply, “there’s me, me dog and the missus, so that’s three of us.”

As a rule, in order to fly at night or in bad weather you need a license called an "instrument rating." Just before I got mine from the Motueka Flying School, I was flying from Wellington to Christchurch (185 miles). I left Wellington a bit late and I had agreed to drop off a mate of mine at a small airfield near Blenheim in the South Island. By the time I arrived at Christchurch it was pitch black and I shouldn’t have still been flying around New Zealand’s skies. As I entered Christchurch International Airport’s airspace I called air traffic control and asked for landing instructions. I think they were fully aware the idiot in the airplane should not have been there, but to their credit, they never said anything. They told me to circle above Belfast. Fortunately I recognized the lights of Belfast because I used to work in the big meat plant there. The controller said that when I saw the lights of a Focker Friendship coming in from Wellington I should follow it into land.

A couple of circuits over Belfast and I saw the blink, blink, blink of the twin propeller Focker heading in to land. I called the tower and reported my find. The tower came back with the instruction, “Position behind the Focker Friendship and proceed to land.” Diligently I confirmed the instruction in those exact words. The radio clicked and a very up market, extremely bored Air New Zealand captain’s voice said, “For the information of both of you, I’m not a Focker Friendship, I’m a seven thirty seven.” After I’d landed the tower came back on the radio, this time just to say, “Oops.”

On a clear day, flying in New Zealand is a privilege. It is true; there is nowhere else on earth quite like it. New Zealand does not have the domestic order of England’s southern counties or the endless expanse of Australia’s outback or even the manufactured theme park quality of Florida’s south east coast. There is a youthful fresh variety about this place. Human toil has tempered but not tamed the enthusiasm of nature here.

My daughter Jane was just a week old the day I flew from Auckland to Wellington. After leaving Auckland I flew over the populated rush of the nation’s largest city, out over impossibly green dairy fields and passed New Zealand’s longest river’s troubled exit into the Tasman Sea. Further south I saw the triple cones of the central North Island mountains still holding on to small pockets of winter snow. Even here, in this most barren central plateau, the scene was awash with color. Light brown tussock, grey rock, a dark emerald canopy of native bush and smudged into the hillsides are purples, whites and reds of thriving imported heather. Approaching my reporting point at Ohura, the scene changed again to the gorges and ridges of the Parapara Ranges - a place of harshness and angles, an undisciplined jumble of busy streams, steep hills and narrow valleys. As far as I could tell there was not a flat paddock anywhere. This was the last place on earth you’d want to try a forced landing, I thought.

“Auckland Radar, this is Echo Kilo Romeo, overhead Ohura Beacon, 8500 feet. Transferring now to Ohakea radar 130 decimal 6.”

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo. Have a good day.”

“Ohakea Radar this is Echo Kilo Romeo overhead Ohura Beacon 8500 feet. Flight plan to Wellington, one POB”

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo”, said a lovely soft Scottish accent. "We have you on Radar at 8500 feet.”

Straight on to Paraparaumu, and then the decent into Wellington – that’s strange I thought. A thin mist had appeared over the front window. I looked out the side. Everything was clear. Perhaps it was some atmospheric condition. I checked the engine gauges. They were fine. I loosened my seat belt and looked over the control panel.

“Oh my God,” a thick stream of dark black oil was oozing over the engine cover. Small specks were covering the front window. I knew Wellington was out of the question. The oil pressure gauge was still fine. Perhaps I could reach Wanganui. Quickly I reduced power, eased the nose down and trimmed the Arrow to a 70 knot, 500 foot per minute descent towards the safety of Wanganui. “Maybe”, but before that thought had time to develop the oil pressure dropped into the red zone at the bottom of the gauge. “How long can it stay there before the engine stops,” I thought? The engine answered quickly with a load bang and silence. The propeller sat still.

I had to find a field. I looked to the left. Pine trees, great for export but not the place to land a small airplane. A gentle turn and too many hills – I had heard of topdressing pilots landing uphill, could I manage that? Another turn, thank God I had so much height, what was that – a field? It looked flat. It looked big. It would do.

“Ohakea Radar this is Echo Kilo Romeo.”

I refused to say Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. That would have made things far worse.

“Go ahead Echo Kilo Romeo” said the soft Scottish voice

“Echo Kilo Romeo, 20 miles south of Ohura beacon, descending through 5000 feet. I have complete engine failure.”

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo, Please advise your intentions”

My intention is that you should at least sound a little concerned, I thought. “Echo Kilo Romeo, I have found a paddock and am attempting to land.” I said.

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo” said the Scottish voice still with not the slightest note of surprise “Cleared to land in a paddock approximately 20 miles south of Ohura. Please call finals.”

Please call finals, who the hell did this guy think he was? I’d better do it though. The field was getting closer; time to put the wheels down; three green lights, good; a bit more flap. “I’ll come in high,” I thought, "that way I’ll avoid the trees and power lines that crossed the final approach.” So far so good - one more turn and I was committed – on finals for better or for worse, come around, line up, actually that looked pretty good.

“Echo Kilo Romeo, on finals for the field.”

“Roger, Echo Kilo Romeo, cleared to land. Good luck.”

Ahh, I thought, the Scottish voice is human after all.

Turn off the electrics, full flaps, speed is good, height, too high, but with no power and flaps that should quickly come down. There was barley in the field and it was a lot taller than I expected. Lift the nose up, up, up. Hold it off. Hold it off. The wheels touched. Keep the nose up. “We’re slowing quickly, must be the barley,” I thought. And then I stopped, silent and alone in a golden pool of barley.

“Bloody great,” I thought, “those Sunday nights in the Aero Club were worth it after all.”

Hear the Wild Dingos Call

2007-11-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

By David

Some of you may recall that two or three weeks ago, Swimwatch published a story about one of our swimmers who was disqualified in the High School Regional Championships. Quite unbelievably, at yesterday’s Gold Coast Winter Championships, this swimmer found herself again embroiled in controversy. It’s unbelievable because on this earth ,you would struggle to find a nicer, less controversial figure than this particular swimmer.

Here’s what happened: The 500 yard freestyle events were swum as timed finals. With the exception of the fastest heat in each age group, all the heats were swum in the morning. On the morning heat sheets however, the evening’s fastest heats were included. I did not read the fine print and assumed our swimmer had plenty of time before her swim, only to discover that the swims shown before hers were all night swims and she had missed her heat.

A mother from our team approached the timekeeper in the swimmer's lane and learned why the race appeared to have been swum so early. Our mother said a woman sitting next to the timekeeper had been adamant; our swimmer was at fault and would not be able to swim in a later heat. Realizing such decisions are not the responsibility of the timekeeper’s friends, I approached the referee. I’ve dealt with him before. He’s a doctor and is fair, impartial and honest - just the standard of official one has come to expect in the United States.

He said he understood the confusion, thought it was fair and would include our swimmer in a spare lane in the event’s last heat. We shook hands, I thanked him and left feeling good about the standard of American officials. There is many a country around the world where what he’d done would never have been considered. In the best interest of a swimmer this man had done what was just. He had prevented a 16 year old from having the sort of experience that, repeated a few times, could drive her from the sport. A thankful girl swam in the last heat and we thought no more of it.

Six hours later I pulled into the pool parking lot for the evening finals. As I climbed from the car the pool’s loudspeaker demanded, “Would the coach of Aqua Crest come to the official’s table.” There I met the “timekeeper’s friend” who had spoken to our mother in the morning. She said she was the Chairman of the Florida Gold Coast Official’s Committee even though the website says that is still Jay Thomas’ job.

She said she wanted to make several points;

She was not going to disqualify our swimmer from the morning’s race. She implied that she could, which was ridiculous. Even if she’d wanted to, I doubt that disqualifying someone six hours later for something the referee had approved would stand rule book analysis. An empty threat like that does nothing for the accuser’s credibility.

She said I had been dishonest by going behind her back and approaching the referee. I guess I was supposed to know she was someone important, but I didn’t. No one went behind anyone’s back. I spoke to the referee without any thought for what an unknown “timekeeper’s friend” had told one of our mothers. Being accused of dishonesty was insulting and unnecessary.

Accepting she was not the sort of person I have much in common with, I decided to leave. I told her the conversation was over and backed away. She put her hand on my arm in an action I felt was designed to stop me leaving. I told her to let me go, I did not appreciate her message or its delivery.

The next morning, our timekeeper’s friend had another meeting arranged, this time with the local coach and a policeman. A policeman. Yes, seriously.

Ironically the coach and the policeman said they wanted peace. “Not half as much as I do,” I said. “Both the last two meetings were unnecessary and had not been called by me. Keep that woman away from me!”

Her behavior was unacceptable. There was no need to bring up again something that had been well and properly resolved on the morning of the first day. God knows what motive prompted her to embark on her ill-advised odyssey. If she had a problem she should have addressed it with the referee who came to the aid of our swimmer. In the end she seemed to realize that, and apologized. Because she apologized, presumably she was aware she had done something wrong.

However, some things go beyond an apology. What she did requires addressing and censure. It is common, in cases such as this, for Swimwatch to receive comments about how officials are volunteers, donating their time to the sport. All that is true. Swimwatch has commented on many outstanding examples of officials at work, especially in the United States. In no way does that mean the actions of officials are above critical analysis. Identifying one example of bad officiating is not an attack on all officials. It is simply saying this one did bad and should be told that

Rough Mates of Mine

2007-11-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

By David

I’ve been in a boxing ring twice. My career ended 1:1, both decisions coming as the result of a knockout. The first rumble was part of my initiation as a third former (freshman) at Wellington College. For American readers, "college" in New Zealand means high school. I was a Firth House boarder which allowed more time for harsher and more prolonged initiation rituals, all aimed at inflicting pain or humiliation or both. My task was to fight Brian, the biggest fifth former (junior classman) in the school, an expert rugby player and never beaten at boxing. Witnesses to the event told me that my predecessors had survived best by taking a few hits until their nose or some other site started to bleed. They had then fallen over and begged for mercy. They said that I would be well advised to do the same thing.

I am unsure whether or not I agreed with their plan. The idea of taking the first few hits had very little appeal. Anyway, on the first Friday of school I was taken to the Aero Club where most initiation ceremonies were performed. Gloves were fitted and a bell rang. Brian advanced across the ring. He was huge, muscles everywhere, my death in his eyes. I closed my eyes. Better not, I thought, bear witness to my passing. In a final act of defiance I swung my right arm as hard as I could.

I’m told it was the Aero Club’s best and cleanest punch. I’m told it landed square in the middle of Brian’s perfect face. I’m told Brian crumpled to the floor on his muscle bound bottom, clutching at the blood spurting from his aristocratic nose. I’m told this because I still had my eyes tightly closed waiting for Brian’s assault. When I did look, Brian was on the floor surrounded by distressed sycophants, concerned at how they would repair their hero so the teachers would not know. None of them spoke to me, afraid that their conversation may be taken as approval for what had just taken place. I took my gloves off and left determined to convey the impression of “no problem, just another day’s work”.

I’ve mentioned Kahui and Donald on Swimwatch before. They were my Te Reinga mates. We hunted together, swam together and ran cross country together. We had our share of success, winning the provincial high school team cross country championship, earning good money from selling deer and wild pigs and I swam for Hawkes Bay and won an Auckland provincial (state) championship. One activity we did not share was their passion for boxing. They were good; both New Zealand junior gold medalists. They trained most nights in the Pohataroa Station (farm) shearing shed. It was two miles from our homes. I used to run up there and do their dry-land and weight training. I stayed well clear of the ring though. They would have murdered me.

Their coach was local school teacher, Mane Mokomoko. He was a tough bugger who later fought for New Zealand in the Vietnam War. I pity any Vietcong who came across Mokomoko on a dark night. Being that I knew better than to fight Kahui or Donald, Mokomoko suggested I might like to box Mavis Stone. She was no push over, a tough and skilled fighter who had also won secondary school shot put titles. Eventually social pressure and Mavis’ assurance that she would go easy on me forced me to agree. I entered the ring, a bundle of nerves and contradictions: on one side, a woman intent and capable of causing me bodily harm, and on the other, a mother whose clear instruction was to never hit a woman.

As we closed I swear I never saw it coming. Mavis hit me with the force of a dozen Mac trucks. I do not know how many of you have read Mohammed Ali’s biography, but in it he describes the confusion caused by a hard hit. He likens it to entering a room filled with floating serpents, alligators and butterflies. I didn’t see any serpents but I was certainly locked in a pretty dark and small room at that moment. When the confusion cleared I was on my knees and my blood was drip, drip, dripping on to the shearing shed’s lanoline and sweat stained wooden floor. Mavis had won by a knockout in just nineteen seconds.

Mokomoko sent us home that night with the instruction that we had to hop the first mile on one leg and the second mile on the other leg. Donald and Kahui barely made it such was their glee at my puny performance. The next morning I was unsure whether my nose, legs or pride hurt the most. The twenty five mile trip to school was longer than usual as Donald and Kahui told each new passenger the story of last night’s training. Sometimes your mates can be rough buggers.

Casualty Rate

2007-11-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

By David

In World War Two, 72 million of a total involved population of 1961 million died; a casualty rate of 3.7%.

On the Florida Gold Coast of all the swimmers registered at 10 years of age only 10% are still swimming at age 16; a casualty rate of 90%.

Two Board members from our team attended the Florida Gold Coast Annual Meeting this weekend. They were impressed with the emphasis placed on the region’s high drop-out rate. I’m impressed too. Florida Gold Coast is not the only place in the world that has the problem. Certainly New Zealand does. From what I’m told, the speakers at the Florida Gold Coast meeting attacked the dilemma head on, put the blame where at least 50% of it lies – over ambitious parents (OAPs): all the ones with, “eat sleep swim” on their number plates, or “I’m a swimming Mom” on the wind shield.

The attention of the Annual Meeting is not misplaced. The casualty rate is outrageous. Since I’ve been in Florida, I have tried to stress the importance of patience, of proper and careful swimming education - often to no avail. Here is what I mean:

A swimmer was brought to me six months after I arrived in Florida. The swimmer was a wreck mentally – the person could not even finish a race. The swimmer's physical state was poor, as well: they were half a minute slower over 800 meters than they had been three years earlier. It did not take PhD in exercise physiology to recognize over-use abuse; just the thing being talked about at the Florida meeting. Through care and patience, the swimmer was brought back to life.

Another mother kept bringing her ten year old daughter to every day double sessions and quietly dropped hints that I should be writing up more speed work. No amount of education seemed to work on an otherwise intelligent human being. Her child’s swimming was a drug. She knew times and splits for her daughter and every other daughter who swam on the Florida Gold Coast. All classic OAP.

Yes, Florida Gold Coast’s emphasis on OAPs is not misplaced. But it is only half the story. You see, there is no point in some of us doing the right thing – of preaching the importance of patience, of holding off severe speed work, of accepting early modest race results, of stressing personal improvement ahead of winning – when there are other coaches who offer a welcome home for the greedy.

Never anywhere have I seen a transfer rate like that on Florida’s Gold Coast. When I arrived one of the Region’s long time coaches told me about the migration habits of some of the local swimming population. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was being bitter. Not at all; it’s like fair ground dodgems at NASCAR speed.

OAPs can only feed their habit when they find a coach willing to supply a home. While there are coaches out there pandering to the early and deadly ambition of greedy parents, those coaches who do the right thing are going to lose money. Lydiard spoke about this in his first book written back in the early 1960s. He said coaches who followed his physiologically sound principles would lose runners. He lost a few, but did not worry as those who left never succeeded in the world arena. Like Lydiard, I don’t really care. It is just another price of doing the right thing. As the data shows, eventually it’s the greedy that lose most.

Junkies will find a pusher. But if the 90% casualty rate is to be reduced there is little point in only addressing the problem of OAPs. Florida Gold coast also needs to address the problem of coaches who supply OAPs with their fix. That’s the step that would take real courage.