By David

I could well have made a mistake. Since the Coalition of Regions decided to negotiate with SPARC and the current Board of Swimming New Zealand I have questioned the Coalition’s sanity. Didn’t they realize? This Review was an expensive white wash; just another devious way of achieving Project Vanguard ambitions.

Of course that view may still prove to be correct. I am pretty sure SPARC have a master plan that involves the socialist delivery of all sport. Their building is full of government bureaucrats, what else could they possibly want? But for now, having met the leader of the review, I’m prepared to give the process a chance. I’m a supporter. I do hope that trust is not misplaced.

The invitation to meet with the Review leaders, Chis Moller and Sue Suckling, was a surprise. The normal behaviour of Swimming New Zealand leaders is to ignore people like me; to brand us as trouble makers, disloyal to the sport and to proceed as though we didn’t exist. The invitation to hear the views of one of the organization’s most vocal critics deserves recognition. They may dismiss those views as an expression of the lunatic fringe but at least they were prepared to make forty five minutes available to hear what this radical had to say. For that I am grateful.

The meeting was held in the Head Office of SPARC. The organization lives in a lovely old building on Customhouse Quay. In years gone by, I have visited an insurance company, a government department and a sports management company at the same location. Obviously I was a bit nervous going into SPARC’s lair. The receptionist helped. She asked if I wanted coffee, I declined, if she could look after my suitcase, I accepted, and agreed to recharge my failing cell phone. The workers, at least, were friendly.

The meeting with Moller and Suckling was held in a room up some very steep and quite long stairs. According to Moller, the process of meeting his guests was at least making him fit. My one trip certainly confirmed that view. Our meeting began with Moller introducing Sue Suckling and himself. I was impressed. They both have Resumes that include a long string of corporate directorships and sporting appointments. Moller has served in senior positions in both New Zealand rugby and cricket. No one could question their qualifications for this task.

Moller then asked for a brief description of my background. I explained that I once had a normal commercial career and for several years had been Managing Director of a company called Colyer Watson. Here again Moller surprised. “Is that,” he asked, “the large animal by-products exporting company?” “Yes it is.” I replied.

I may have misunderstood the moment but I thought I felt the mood change. Moller clearly knew that Colyers was New Zealand’s largest exporter of animal by-products and was now going to give me time to put my case. The remainder of the forty minutes was an excellent exchange of ideas on the role of a national sporting organization.

As you would expect I argued that the role of Swimming New Zealand is to provide a fertile environment for people like me to do our job. Swimming New Zealand has no expertise in producing champion swimmers. Good God, they’ve been at it for ten years; they’ve spent sixteen million dollars and still can’t win an Olympic swimming race. Swimming New Zealand and SPARC need to understand that it is not the function of the “state” to produce Olympic Champions. That’s our job. That’s the role of professional coaches like Kent, Winter, Duncan, Hurring, me and twenty or thirty others. In an individual sport like swimming I support a capitalist form of governance. New Zealand swimming has tried Jan Cameron’s state socialism. It has failed. It is time to move on. It is time to try something different and better.

I thought Moller and Suckling understood the point; maybe even had sympathy with the capitalist philosophy. Their corporate upbringing might be cause for optimism. Perhaps these people were not just hired SPARC sycophants, employed to listen, charm and then impose on swimming the party line of centralized delivery. Perhaps there was hope. Time will tell whether the hope that came out of the meeting has substance. Will Moller and Suckling produce a report that proposes the capitalist philosophy they appeared to find appealing in our discussion or will they comply with their paymaster’s orders and hand in another Project Vanguard look alike?

That was the heart and soul of our discussion. We did however cover one or two minor points. Moller seemed concerned that I was being denied entry to the New Zealand Olympic Swimming Trials. Clearly he did not think that the fact I wrote articles critical of Swimming New Zealand was sufficient reason for my swimmers to be denied access to their coach. He asked to see the ridiculous Swimming New Zealand’s rule that brought this into effect. Again there is hope. Will I be allowed to coach my swimmers at the Trials after all?

We discussed one view of the history of Swimming New Zealand. Perhaps there was merit in the view that the organization had once done very little for anyone. In that period strong coaches such as Lincoln Hurring, Hilton Brown, Duncan Lang, Burt Cotterill, Ross Anderson and Bret Naylor had coached Olympic medallists, world record holders and World Champions. They asked for nothing from Swimming New Zealand and that’s what they got. Then swimming fell under the Cameron spell. The organization changed quickly from doing nothing to doing everything. In just a couple of years swimming moved from lassie-faire neglect to iron fisted control. Any athlete wanting to represent New Zealand had little option but to walk the Cameron pathway. And it led nowhere. They won nothing. Worse than that, the standard of coaching in the provinces declined as Swimming New Zealand imposed its will on us all. Any coach who stood up to the monolith or who wrote for Swimwatch was mistreated and marginalized. The “state” knew best and we had all better tow the party line.

There is however another way. There is a way where the “state” observes properly defined limits and creates an environment where we all can do our jobs; where the “state” avoids the neglect and the dictatorial control that have characterised its performance in the past. I can only hope Moller and Suckling’s report reflects that middle ground. After Wellington, here at Swimwatch, we do have hope.

By David

I have been asked to prepare a submission and attend a meeting of the Swimming New Zealand Review Committee. Set out below is a copy of the document I propose to submit to the representatives of the Committee. Your comments and suggestions would be most welcome.

INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF SWIMMING NEW ZEALAND

ONE ON ONE SUBMISSION

Philosophical Background

It is instructive to look at some aspects of the political philosophy surrounding the administration of sports, both to understand why individual sports are different from team sports and why the management of sport is different from the management style relevant in other major sectors of society.

In a compassionate society there are very good reasons for the state to care for its weaker members – its young, to provide them with an education – its sick, to provide them with medical attention – its elderly to provide them with care. A socialist approach in these areas is appropriate and proper.

However international individual sport does not involve the care of society’s weakest members. In this area we need a method of management and control that is best at nurturing the sporting world’s strongest and most able. Historical evidence and current empirical examples unanimously support the view that the philosophy known as “libertarianism” produces the best results. In particular the version of libertarianism called “consequential libertarianism” employed to govern swimming in the United States works best. The United States has won 214 (44%) of the 489 gold medals awarded for all the Olympic Games swimming events. In swimming, at least, private enterprise competition has consistently outperformed centrally managed socialist programs.

Libertarianism includes diverse beliefs, all advocating strict limits to government activity and sharing the goal of maximizing individual liberty and political freedom. Consequential libertarianism refers to the view that liberty leads to favorable consequences such as prosperity, efficiency, or superior performance and for those reasons should be supported, advocated, and maximized.

The Last Decade in Swimming New Zealand

In spite of having an clearly identifiable federal constitution the past decade in Swimming New Zealand has been characterized by a high degree of central control – especially in the management of international competitive swimming. All the financial resources made available by the state have been spent in one program, at one pool, by one Head Coach, Jan Cameron. This sector of the sport has been run lock, stock and barrel by Swimming New Zealand. Socialism; the method of management best suited to caring for the needs of the nation’s weakest members, has been applied to providing for it’s strongest.

• For ten years SNZ has actively poached swimmers from regional clubs using the lure of access to state funds. Currently the Swimming New Zealand website asks swimmers based in New Zealand regions to apply for membership of the Millennium Institute and leave their home club and coach. Swimming New Zealand happily indulges in a practice that would bring severe censure to any other club.
• Only swimmers at the state funded Millennium Institute can receive individual financial assistance.
• Last month Swimming New Zealand extended its control of international swimming by establishing a Wellington elite training facility. Given the current Review of Swimming this was a disgraceful piece of political deception. It is a clear attempt by Swimming New Zealand to control and influence the outcome of the Review process.
• New Zealand’s regional coaches have abdicated responsibility for producing champion swimmers. Coaching international swimmers is something New Zealand does up at the Millennium Institute. As a result the standard of coaching in New Zealand has seriously declined.  Fine domestic coaches like Lincoln Hurring, Ross Anderson, Duncan Laing, Hilton Brown and Brett Naylor have gone and they have not been replaced.
• Swimmers attending the Millennium Institute have been treated with privilege and license not enjoyed by their club counterparts; special silver fern uniforms, exclusive seating at national championships, select meet entry procedures – and none of it earned.
• Elite swimmers refusing to attend the Millennium Institute have been excluded from New Zealand team meetings and generally treated as inferior to their Millennium based colleagues.
• Competition; the life blood of international success in an individual sport, has been sucked out of swimming in New Zealand.
• With the exception of Alison Fitch, who has considerable management shortcomings, no one on the Board of Swimming New Zealand has any significant product knowledge. Many of the organization’s bad decisions reflect poor swimming input.
• The current method of preparing elite swimmers produces a very real them and us environment; the haves and the have not’s, the privileged and the poor, Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. “One team” will never exist in that unfair environment. We, the grass roots of swimming, will make sure of that.

AND IT HASN’T WORKED. AT EVERY OLYMPIC GAMES SINCE 1996, FOR SIXTEEN YEARS, WE HAVE ATTENDED AND HAVE WON NOTHING. NOT A MEDAL OF ANY DESCRIPTION.

For the money applied (maybe as high as $16million) that is simply not good enough. Centralism and socialism have had their day. It hasn’t worked. More of the same is simply not an option. So what should happen?

The Next Decade in Swimming New Zealand          

Socialism in the management of elite swimming needs to be replaced by consequential libertarianism. New Zealand needs to get the state (Swimming New Zealand) out of the management and coaching of elite swimming. Competition needs to be restored as the driving force behind the preparation of elite swimmers. A private enterprise club based structure needs to be encouraged. Constitutional federalism needs to be strengthened; not abandoned.

How should this be done?

Fortunately we have examples to copy; the management of elite swimming in the United States and the program Arthur Lydiard used so successfully to put Finnish middle distance running back on top of the world.

The United States National Team is coached by approximately thirty different club or university based coaches who are employed by teams scattered all over the United States. Salo coaches a sprint based program in Los Angeles for the University of Southern California. Bowman coaches a distance based program for the North Baltimore Swim Team. Ryan Lochte is coached at a university in Florida. Amanda Weir trains with a club team in Atlanta, Georgia. The United States cultivates excellence wherever it is found. They have long recognized that a winning relationship like the one that existed between Loader and Laing is special and important. Unlike New Zealand where a decade of effort has gone into destroying those relationships (for example, Hind from Wellington, Quilter and Thomas from Hawkes Bay) and moving our best swimmers to Auckland, the United States does all it can to provide an environment for elite relationships, formed in private clubs, to prosper.

Lydiard did the same thing in Finland. He recognized it was impossible for him to coach several winning Olympic runners. It was more than one or two men could manage and there was not the time available. He resolved to harness the resources of all Finland’s running coaches and educate and encourage them to prepare world class runners. The result was medals in the steeplechase, the 1500, the 5000 and the 10,000 at the Munich and Montreal Olympic Games. Lydiard raised the standard of running, and especially the coaching of running, throughout Finland; not just on one track in Helsinki had he tried to do it all himself. When Lydiard said excellence on every track, he meant it. At two Olympics his coaching and club based libertarianism produced five Olympic Gold Medals and a Bronze.

There will be those who will tell you it is impossible to produce an Olympic champion out of the proverbial Eketahuna pool. Don’t you believe it. Rod Dixon won a bronze in the Munich 1500 meters living in Nelson. Loader lived and trained in Dunedin. Dave McKenzie won the Boston Marathon living and training in Greymouth. Nick Willis was based in Ann Arbor, Michigan when he won an Olympic silver medal in the 1500 meters. Valerie Adams lives in a small village in Switzerland. Excellence is not restricted to the North Shore of Auckland.

Swimming New Zealand’s role is to encourage local coaches to do their job better. Ironically Swimming New Zealand spent some effort promoting the very good slogan, “Excellence in every pool” and then proceeded to pour $16million of SPARC money into just one pool at the Millennium Institute.

The Millennium Institute program and the Wellington newcomer should be closed – that is completely closed, nothing at all left. The swimmers and coaches should be assisted to find positions in club teams.

An experienced Head Coach should be appointed to Swimming New Zealand. His brief should not involve coaching swimmers. His job should be to coach the coaches of New Zealand’s best swimmers; to assist them prepare world class swimmers capable of winning Olympic medals. The net needs to be excellent and it needs to be broad, so that world class talent can be nurtured even when it is discovered in Eketahuna.

Resources currently paid to fund the Millennium and Wellington programs should be paid directly to swimmers and their coaches irrespective of where in the world they are being prepared. Every swimmer and their coach who is say the national champion and is ranked in say the world’s top ten should receive a living wage and their coach should also be paid a similar amount. That funding is guaranteed each twelve months and is based on the results at each year’s National Summer Championships. The funding for swimmer and coach should be administered through the swimmer’s club but should all go to the swimmer and coach involved without administration deductions. Payment should be based solely on performance; not membership of an institute or geographical living location.

The National Coach’s job should be to ensure that every coach in the country is aware of their responsibility in the area of coaching world class swimmers; excellence in every pool. The National Coach should assist every coach to prepare the funded athlete’s swimming in their local program. This should include preparing annual training plans and competition and travel budgets. Done properly the country ends up with a team of maybe fifteen or so coaches working to produce an Olympic result rather than Reagan, Talbot-Cameron and Hurring as we have now – with the rest of us hell bent on proving them wrong; determined to upset and overturn an unfair and flawed elite swimming management structure.

Conclusion

When I received the invitation to meet with representatives of the Review panel, I did consider declining the opportunity. There is much evidence that representatives of SPARC and Swimming New Zealand are not conducting this Review in good faith; that the process is simply a means of imposing a predetermined organizational blueprint on the sport. Minutes of meetings have been altered, lies have been told and the will of the shareholders has been bitterly opposed. The leaders of the sport have not acted honourably. The Coalition of Regions knew that I opposed the decision to negotiate with SPARC and Swimming New Zealand. I said so often in my swimming blog.

By participating in the same charade, was I giving legitimacy to a corrupt process? The answer to that is probably yes. I should not be here. I am because of the thought that even if there is less than one percent chance that the management of elite swimming in New Zealand can be changed, I owe it to the swimmers I sit and watch swim 100 kilometres every week; to those men and women I see bleeding from harsh chlorine burns; to those athletes who lie awake at night painfully coughing through inflamed breathing passages. I owe it to them to give this opportunity a shot; no matter how slim the odds. That is why I am here. The case I have argued will produce a better, more successful outcome. It will produce Olympic medallists. It is a method of management that is in the best interests of those I serve. However, I fear “consequential libertarianism” will not see the light of day. The current centralized structure is deeply entrenched. The influence of SPARC bureaucrats is so pervasive and the mistrust of sporting liberty so engrained, my guess is that the freedoms proposed here will be seen as irresponsible. Sport’s administrators in New Zealand have tended to favour centralized power and bureaucratic process ahead of competitive results. I suspect they will do so again.

By David

Swimming New Zealand is in the middle of an in-depth Review of its structure, its management and its sphere of operation. Everything about the organization is open to analysis; is the subject of critical examination. The CEO of SPARC, Peter Miskimmin pushed the Coalition of Regions into accepting the Review because he saw it as the only way left to inflict his socialist management model on yet another New Zealand sport. He’d already imposed centralized management structures on rowing, gymnastics and surf live-saving. All three are currently in various stages of being broke and broken. But Miskimmin does not care. The management of swimming was weak. The sport was completely dependent on Miskimmin for its financial survival. It was an ideal subject for the next SPARC invasion.

Swimwatch warned the Coalition of Regions not to trust SPARC. On a dark, wet night, lost on the top of Mount Whakapunaki, Miskimmin, Collins, Butler, Byrne and McDonald are not the first guys you’d chose as mates. In fact as far as captains of industry go they remind me of Captain Francesco Schettino. He was the Captain of that Italian cruise ship that sank close to the Italian coast a couple of weeks ago. Captain Schettino has been accused of leaving the sinking ship while hundreds of his passengers were fighting for their lives. You’d be excused for thinking that he may have learned that trick from Miskimmin and his friends. My warning to the Coalition of Regions was to never shake hands with those guys without carefully counting your fingers afterwards.

Well, the Coalition of Regions ignored that advice. They were conned by the smooth talking Miskimmin. They trusted SPARC. And now the Coalition of Regions and the sport of swimming will pay for that trust. The Mediation Agreement that set up the Review silenced the opposition. In the hiatus of silence; with their rivals gagged, the Board of Swimming New Zealand and SPARC have run riot.

During a period of management Review, good business practice demands that structural and management changes are put on hold. A time of Review is a time to call a holiday on even normal business initiatives. But that hasn’t happened here; not by a country mile. In a series of schemes, that must have been preplanned, Swimming New Zealand has embarked on a raft of conspiracies. While the rest of us have slept, Swimming New Zealand has been very busy indeed.

They have altered their rules to ban people like me from their National Championships. Because I dare to exercise the right to question the motives of the crooks that run this organization, Swimming New Zealand introduced a measure that denied me the right to coach my swimmers at the New Zealand Olympic Trials. My swimmers are not political pawns in my debate with Swimming New Zealand. It is none of their business. However there is a part of me that wants to see one or two of my swimmers swim really well so that main stream reporters in New Zealand can appreciate the hurt I feel at being denied the right to wish my swimmers well or congratulate them on a job well done. We have worked very hard for that moment and I do take it hard when Miskimmin and Butler and their friends deny me the right to enjoy it.

They have established a High Performance Unit in Wellington. The current Review needs to consider whether Swimming New Zealand has any right to be involved in the preparation of competitive swimmers. Certainly the evidence of sixteen years and sixteen million dollars suggests that they are very poor at the job. Recognizing that the dismal performance of the North Shore High Performance Unit might lead thinking members of the Review to the conclusion that private enterprise can prepare elite athletes better Miskimmin initiated two master strokes of deception. He appointed Gary Hurring to the Review Committee and then paid him to Head the Wellington High Performance Unit. Miskimmin just bought off a New Zealand Sportsman of the Year and his vote. There is no way Gary can vote to end his own source of income. And second, Miskimmin’s Wellington High Performance Unit has created a structure so expensive, so complex that any Review would be excused for reaching the conclusion that it was all too difficult to unravel. Game, set and match to the bad buggers.

And now Swimming New Zealand has circulated a document called, “Proposed changes to the SNZ Regulations and Events Information”. This masterpiece contains the next three moves in Swimming New Zealand’s campaign of dishonesty. The proposed changes are not good. However the method of their introduction during a period of Review positively stinks. The reputation of Miskimmin and Butler is in tatters – or it should be.

The first change proposes that, “After the successful staging of a combined open and age group short course championship in August last year it is proposed to maintain a combined event using a 5 day format going forward.” I believe that’s not a bad idea. However Swimming New Zealand has no right to make the change in the middle of a period of Review.

The second change proposes that, “the format that we currently have for the State 2012 New Zealand Open Championships makes it impossible to select relay team members for the London Olympics, as in a couple of cases the relay event occurs prior to the individual event. This will therefore require a change to the sessions that relays are held in.” Here again, not a bad suggestion but made at a most suspect moment in absolute violation of the agreement made between Swimming New Zealand, the Coalition of Regions and Peter Miskimmin.

The third change proposes that, “It is Swimming New Zealand’s goal to ensure that all events used to achieve qualifying times for New Zealand Championships and for use overseas are of an appropriate standard and swimmers are given the best possible opportunity to achieve their goal times. In an effort to ensure this we are proposing that an event ratification process is established.” The first two innocuous changes are simply to disguise the danger inherent in this classic piece of Swimming New Zealand treachery; to lull the reader into a sense that all this is boring house-keeping before sliding through a measure of seismic magnitude. It is a classic Swimming New Zealand ploy. It’s the way Miskimmin and his friends do just about everything. As we have said before the buggers would not know how to lie straight in bed. This move simply proposes that every swim meet should be subject to a Swimming New Zealand registration process. Recognize the deception? Within a year Comet and Aqua Hawks and West Auckland Aquatics and Wharanui and every other club in the country will be paying Swimming New Zealand a fortune to register meets those clubs have been staging for thirty years for free. This is simply another Miskimmin led, Swimming New Zealand rip off.