Many responsibilities come with the role of leadership. But of foremost importance leaders must provide a vision that gives the organization direction and purpose. Planning the organisation’s future is basic management 101. And for a year now that function has been non-existent in Swimming New Zealand. I have no idea what the Board of Directors do at Antares Place. It certainly seems to have little to do with vision, direction and purpose. A time line of events during the past twelve months illustrates the point.

December 2016

In December 2016 High Performance Sport New Zealand decided swimming was failing and reduced the government’s financial support. The reaction of Swimming New Zealand Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, was a classic example of what has turned out to be ridiculous nonsense. First of all he said he was “surprised and disappointed”. If he was then he was alone in the world. Every person involved in swimming was well aware of the poor performance that led to that decision. And if Cotterill wasn’t, he shouldn’t be Chairman.

Cotterill then doubled down on the fault by saying, “We’re still going through the process to understand the rationale. The reality is the funding decision is made, but what we would like to understand is ‘why?’ and ‘what do we need to do to get back in the good books?”

I would have thought the answer to those questions was pretty bloody obvious. For twenty years the sport hasn’t won anything. But perhaps Cotterill doesn’t know enough to see the obvious. All that was twelve months ago and we’ve not heard from Cotterill why or what we need to do to get back in the good books. Is that because, a year down the track, Cotterill still doesn’t know or is it because he knows but has no idea how to fix the problem?

In a lovely insight into the wisdom that Swimming New Zealand brings to sport’s management Cotterill concluded his remarks by telling New Zealand, “I think we’ve got the right coaching in place and a new facility [at the Millennium Institute].” The right coaching was an American age group club coach called Jerry Olszewski and two New Zealanders, Gary Hurring and Donna Bouzaid. Since then all three have left. Olszewski clearly had enough and went back to the United States and the other two were sacked by those who, five minutes before, were calling them the “right coaching”.

And so in December 2106 the signs were that the management of swimming in New Zealand was unravelling at a hundred miles an hour.

April 2017

Swimming New Zealand sent 16 swimmers to a high altitude training camp in the United States. I was about to say the camp was planned, but that’s not true. Without any clear plan someone decided that a three week altitude camp, three months before the World Championships was perfect preparation. You don’t need to know much about swim coaching to know that in three months any benefit of altitude training will have long gone. Five minutes after typing “altitude training” into Google you could learn that. The result of Swimming New Zealand’s camp was that a team of tired, poorly prepared swimmers went off to Budapest to take on the world.

It may not seem important but, in my opinion, the decision to program that camp in April is the simplest and most graphic example of a Board who have no idea what they are doing. And the end result of that is that they actually end up doing things that cause harm.

July 2017

A New Zealand team went off to compete in the World Championships in Budapest. As expected the performance was disappointing: worse than the previous three World Championships. No gold, no silver, no bronze, one swim in the finals, two swims in semi-finals, not appearing on the medal table and an average place in their events of 26^th – down 3 places from two years ago and 7 places from four years ago. A train wreck by any measure.

Another way of looking at the fiasco was the number and percentage of personal bests. A PB percentage of 14% is not good enough. A club coach would rightly have serious committee problems with that performance record. An international coach should pack his or her stopwatch and white board marker and head through the Waterview Tunnel bound for Auckland Airport.

August 2017

And that is exactly what Head Coach, Jerry Olszewski, decided to do. He was out of here; on the plane back to Arizona. I suspect that as Coleridge put it, “He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.”

In the meantime the much vaunted National Elite Program that for twenty years we were told was New Zealand’s pathway to international swimming honors and for twenty years cost a million dollars a year is now being directed and coached by someone the Swimming New Zealand website describes as an “intern”. The internet tells me an intern is “a trainee who works, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.” Except at the comedy they call Swimming New Zealand. Intern there means you’re the boss.

September 2017

At least one member of the Swimming New Zealand Board saw there was a problem and decided to write a report recommending the sport be re-structured into several autonomous regions. On Swimwatch I welcomed the initiative and said this “The report recommends a good path forward but, on its own, it is not enough. The real work is to make sure the Zones are working to agreed plans and established procedures. The recommended structure is a good start but, in all seriousness, the plan to put something that works in place is only half done.”

Two months have gone by since the report was written and the initiative appears to have withered and died. We have heard nothing. At last someone produced something of value. I hope it has not been the victim of Swimming New Zealand infanticide.

November 2017

Swimming New Zealand has decided there will be no national trials for the Commonwealth Games. Swimmers will instead be able to qualify in regional meets. National trials are a good and proper and important part of preparing for international events. This Commonwealth Games begin on the 4 April 2018. Swimming New Zealand should have programmed a full National LC Championships and Trials from the 1^st to the 6^th March.

New Zealand’s greatest success in Commonwealth competition was at the Auckland Games in 1990. Just like the 2018 Games, the 1990 Games were held early in the year. On that occasion Swimming New Zealand had the National Championships and Trials very shortly before the Games. The result was that swimmers like Simcic, Moss, Kingsman, Tapper, Anderson, Jeffs, Steel and Langrell were swimming at their very best. The same thing will not happen on this occasion. In fact, as I understand it, right now only two swimmers have even qualified to swim in the event.

Conclusion

I read recently a social media comment about the current state of swimming in New Zealand. This is what it said.

“Our top swimmers are actually getting better – we had a NZ record this week ( Matthew Stanley) in Beijing and several at NZ Short course champs, among others. Our top age group swimmers are better than ever with so many NAG records set this year – one 14-year-old even tied with an Olympian at the recent nationals. Swimming NZ has a huge role to play in that – it organised the meet – one of the best national meets seen in years.”

I have no idea what planet the author has been living on for the past year. But I guess in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. It seems to me that events at Swimming New Zealand since December 2016 hardly justify the description of “actually getting better”. In my view the facts seem to support a description of “quickly getting worse”.