A Tale of Two Cities & Two Sports

In October last year Bruce Cotterill, the Chairman of Swimming New Zealand (SNZ), was interviewed by the North Shore Channel magazine. Cotterill was asked about the challenges of being SNZ Chairman and the benefits of living on the North Shore of Auckland. His answers give a stunning insight into Cotterill’s personality. They also provide clarity about why swimming is a losing sport; losing members, losing income and losing performances. A few years ago Cotterill posted a quote on his website that said if you have a problem in your business stand in front of a mirror – you may see the problem standing in front of you. This Channel interview may be our Cotterill mirror moment.

And so let’s look at some quotes from the interview. First Cotterill had this to say about living on the North Shore.

The quote confirms that Cotterill is a right wing diehard. I doubt there is any risk Cotterill will not vote for the National Party, even if its leader does not know how to pronounce the word China. It’s China not Chouna. But it is not Cotterill’s reactionary politics that concerns me. The feature of concern is the moaning and whinging about the unfairness of Auckland’s democracy. Typical of people, like Cotterill, is looking for something or someone to blame when they lose. The last thing the Cotterill gang ever do is look in the mirror.

When Cotterill’s right wing candidate doesn’t win the mayoral election it’s the fault of the electoral boundaries. But the implied racism in his South Auckland comment is of even deeper concern. When he says, “South Auckland will always elect a Super City Mayor” that’s way too close for my comfort to saying, “Those Maori and Islanders have too much say in electing the mayor of North Shore”. If only North Shore’s pure white people had an election all of their own we could elect a proper mayor to look after our ethnically pure region. Cotterill needs to explain himself because all that sounds way too close to racism for my liking.

But, in my opinion, the whole comment conveys the thoughts of a loser. You would never hear a Mark Schubert or an Arthur Lydiard or me, for that matter, making an excuse like that. It just reeks of the idea that the cards are always stacked against us. We lose but it is someone else’s fault – in this case the brown people who live in South Auckland. Champions do not think that way.

And now let’s look at what Cotterill had to say about being Chairman of SNZ.

Here we go again – a Cotterill whinge. It is not South Auckland brown people that are the problem this time. It’s the popular sports of rugby, cricket, netball, rowing and yachting. What Cotterill seems incapable of understanding is that his job is to do something about lifting swimming into the rowing and yachting world. He seems to prefer standing around moaning about not being “one of the big sports” than he is about working to do something to change that. Once again his failure is someone else’s fault.

And just to make sure we don’t blame him for swimming’s disasters he trots out the old excuse that it is harder to be good at swimming than any other sport. As I say there is always a ready-made excuse when you are one of the Cotterills of this world. After all he says – “the top 16 in an event can be separated by less than one second. That doesn’t happen in rowing or yachting.” See how much harder it is for poor us. If only Sport NZ realized how hard we have it in swimming, they would pay us more than they give to those easy sports like rowing and yachting. For Cotterill it seems that last in a swimming race is better than a gold medal in yachting. That is rubbish of course. Just ask Russell Coutts or Peter Blake or Peter Burling.

Incidentally Cotterill’s comment about the top 16 at an Olympic Games being separated by less than a second is only barely true. At the Rio Olympic Games, of the 32 events swum, everyone except the men’s 50m freestyle had more than one second separating the top 16 swimmers. Cotterill’s comment is true but only by one event. As an excuse for the problems in swimming it is pathetic “fake news”.

Every time Cotterill opens his mouth he provides us with an insight into why swimming is so badly served by its leaders. Certainly with the attitudes shown in this interview I wouldn’t follow him to a Sunday school picnic let alone the Olympic Games. Mind you if the Sunday school picnic was in South Auckland I’d probably have to go on my own.