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And They Call It High Performance

By David

Swimming New Zealand continues to lurch from one disaster to another. I imagine there are a few Swimwatch readers who think I pick on a group of fine administrators doing their best to run the sport of swimming in New Zealand. I’d love to know how they explain the high performance failures coming out of Swimming New Zealand today. The place is a shambles and it’s getting worse.

I was delighted to see that recent readership statistics are reporting a new regular Swimwatch reader from Lausanne, Switzerland. I have no idea of the identity of this new Swiss reader. However Lausanne is the home town of FINA. I am hoping someone in their Avenue de l’Avant-Poste office has thought the unease expressed in Swimwatch is important enough to investigate. FINA have every right to be concerned. Their New Zealand branch is a disgusting confusion of lies, dishonesty and incompetence.

When I met Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance Committee I undertook to refrain from commenting on their work until they reported to the membership. Well today they posted their report on the Swimming New Zealand website. So now, I guess, it’s okay to subject them to some critical analysis.

When they first posted this report I took the precaution of taking a copy. Swimming New Zealand alter what they say so often it is important to have a personal record. Sure enough a short time after I took my copy, their report was altered. I wondered what had changed. What was wrong with the first post? My guess is that Hayley Palmer was left out of the World Championship 4×100 freestyle relay. Palmer was a clear second in the 100 freestyle at the New Zealand Trials. She holds the New Zealand record in the event and Swimming New Zealand droped her from the relay. What on earth is going on? Was Hayley dropped because she left Jan Cameron’s son’s squad to prepare with Randy Rees in Florida? Swimming New Zealand will probably be forced to include Palmer in the relay but the damage to the team and the swimmer is serious. Whoever made that mistake should be gone.

Anyway, why is a report like this being posted under the name of the High Performance Governance Committee? I though their purpose was to look at the future of high performance swimming; to examine barriers to competitive success. This report looks like the Committee has decided to run the show. Begs the question of what Cameron is being paid to do these days. If Ross Butler has assumed the role of wishing the team well, of announcing relay teams and team staff; if Mark O’Connor is replacing Cameron as Team Leader in Shanghai what is there left for Cameron to do? It would not surprise me if she is sitting back, doing nothing, cashing her pay check and passing everything off as Butler’s baby. You see, it’s her way out. If things go badly, if there are any problems, she can say, “Not my problem. Talk to Ross Butler or Helen Norfolk. They are in charge now.” If things go well she will say it was the result of all the preparation undertaken on her watch. Either way Cameron wins.

How come Mark O’Connor has been appointed Team Manager? I know he has an important administration role in the Swimming New Zealand office, but what does he know about swim team management? Has he ever been a swim team manager? Or is the 2011 World Championships his first experience? Mind you, whatever his experience, he will probably perform better than a manager that spends her time commenting for her husband’s television channel or a leader who chooses a game of netball ahead of the swimming preliminaries.

I am always a touch uneasy when someone finds it necessary to publically proclaim their love or unity or fidelity. Butler’s report contains all of these. For example, why is it necessary for him to make this declaration – “they travel as one team, supporting each other, and are well supported by their coaches and officials.” The reason Butler has to say all this stuff is because it’s not true. The reports of tension between Scott Cameron and Mark Regan are sufficiently numerous that they must contain some truth. Anyone with Regan’s experience must see Scott as privileged issue promoted way beyond his ability or experience. Besides it is not in the Cameron matriarch’s nature to promote unity. If this team is one team, supporting each other, it will be the first New Zealand swim team to achieve that status in over ten years.

The ratio of coaches and officials on the Shanghai team is an impressive nine for fourteen swimmers. I personally think the biomechanics specialist and the performance analyst are a waste of money. However I also concede there is a lot of support for this type of service. The presence of nine officials on the team did encourage me to wonder at the staff numbers Cameron had at her Millennium Institute. This is what I found. The Millennium Institute website lists 19 swimmers as members of the High Performance program. However we know that Palmer trains in Florida. For 18 swimmers then, they list 19 coaches and staff. Now that is bloody ridiculous. Makes you wonder how Lydiard and Jelley ever won New Zealand those eight Olympic medals.

One other quote in the Committee’s report attracted my attention. Referring to his High Performance committee Ross Butler said – “mindful of its commitment to identifying and removing barriers that might impede our New Zealand swimmers from achieving success.” Let there be no misunderstanding, even if Swimming New Zealand does not know, certainly every region, every club and the public of New Zealand know that the names of the barriers impeding our swimmers from achieving success are Coulter, Byrne and Cameron. I’m just afraid Butler hasn’t got the guts to do anything about them. If that is the case the Regions have a grave responsibility to protect the organization they own.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 1:43 am and is filed under New Zealand . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Sensible Swimming

    Small comment – Mark O’Connor was the manager of the team which went to Pan Pacs last year. Slight inaccuracy in your report, but some of us who watch the dealings from Pelorus House have cause to be grateful to Mark O’Connor – without his work as General Manager I think SNZ would be in an even bigger mess.

    Speaking of inaccuracies though – someone who received an invite to the farewell for the world championship team showed me the email they got – which day do you think it is on they asked? Tuesday 10th of July the email read. So was it Sunday 10th of July, or Tuesday 12th July? Well it turns out to be Tuesday 12th of July – small problem…some of the team are leaving on Monday 11th July, so I guess the whole one team deal does not quite work from the start.

    I am also wondering how Lauren Boyle, Glenn Snyders, Tash Hind, Amaka Gessler and Penelope Marshall feel about being coached while the team is away by one of Scot Talbot, Leane Speechly or Gary Hurring when their own coach Mark Regan is there, but under dictate from Jan Cameron he is not allowed to coach on pool deck because he is there not as a coach, but as a coaching adviser. So much for one team and trying to ensure that our athletes get the best that they need! Still, these guys looked in pretty good shape when I saw them in Auckland last weekend – it looks like Mark has done a good job of sheltering them from the rubbish and helping them to toughen up mentally – they will appreciate all of that help when they face the worlds best this month. Speaking of how people must feel though – what about Mark Regan himself? He does not seem to say much, but as the most experienced coach in terms of delivering at the top he is clearly the one Ineson had in mind when he said that a head coach needed to be appointed. It is my guess that Ross Butler has not confirmed to Mark Regan that he plays a part in the future because Scot Talbot has said he will walk if Mark Regan is appointed head coach. Caught in a moral dilemma Butler is vacillating and thinks that Regan will always be a part of the picture so he can be treated like rubbish. If I were Regan I would walk after Shanghai – there is only so much rubbish a single employee should have to accept and Regan has had more of it in his 18 months in New Zealand than any employee should ever have to to take in a lifetime. If he does walk, then his loss prior to London would be one of the biggest failures possible.

    One more thought for you. The NZ Herald reported yesterday that the Manufacturers Association has fired their CEO because of his inappropriate comments made a week ago – how come it took so long people are saying. Well I wonder how come it is taking SNZ so long to read a report which says clearly that three people have failed the sport and are fundamentally responsible for this mess we are in – one month later those people are still in office and clearly seem to be going nowhere else fast.

    What is the message which is being sent to our athletes here? The report says that they have been failed and their future funding has been placed at risk because of systemic failures caused by those people. Now they head off to their pinnacle event a month after the report is published and the people identified as being responsible are still in office!

    I think it says very loudly that the organisation does not really care about the athletes or their success as much as it does about protecting the jobs and positions of the people who have milked and rorted the system for all it is worth. Remove Cameron, Byrne and Coulter and then we will begin to think that maybe the findings of the report are being taken seriously! Until then all I can see is that Ross Butler who has sat as a key part of a board which has failed the sport is now chairing a committee in the role of ‘spin master in chief’ to try and dig them out of a big hole – you know what, I think he might just succeed and we will find in another 6 months that Cameron, Byrne and Coulter are all still in their jobs!

    Keep up the good work David – you at least are a voice which is trying to hold their feet to the fire. Sorry I got worked up – it was supposed to be a small comment!

  • Old Boxer

    Saw this article today (posted a few weeks ago but I seemed to miss it in all the fallout).

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/5161202/Swimming-NZ-may-need-to-look-in-mirror

    Cheers.

  • Chris

    So David .. you need another clock. An Ineson Report Recommendations clock.

  • GH

    Ian Turner another coach with world class track record lost to NZ recently.

  • Hey, if you make a list of the good and world-class people lost to swimming in New Zealand over the past ten years it would be a very long and distinguished list indeed.