Archive for the ‘ Racing ’ Category

Championship Talent

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

By David

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade.” That interesting quote was made by Benjamin Franklin. This week an unusual mix of coincidences reminded me of the famous American’s quote and his renowned opposition to authoritarianism. A New Zealand team of twenty swimmers flew out to compete in the eighth Oceania Championships that start in Samoa next week and a Level Two swim meet took place in the Auckland Swimming Center.

There may not seem to be much of a connection, but let me explain. The first Oceania Championships were held sixteen years ago, in 1994, in New Caledonia. In those days Swimming New Zealand didn’t select teams for the event. Anyone who wanted to go could enter. In 1994 I think four New Zealanders made the trip. Two of them were coached by me – Toni Jeffs and Nichola Chellingworth. Entering Nichola was a bit of a stretch. She was twelve years of age and had only swum in one race before leaving for New Caledonia. The race hadn’t gone all that well. She was disqualified for a false start. New Zealand’s newest and youngest international had never successfully completed a swimming race. As we arranged the entries Swimming New Zealand never asked so I never volunteered that information.

Just before we left for New Caladonia, David Myer, the Chief Executive of Swimming New Zealand sent me a note that expressed his organization’s disapproval of Nichola’s entry. He had discovered that she had been disqualified in her only previous start. He said that if it wasn’t for the already paid airfares and hotels she would have been withdrawn from the event. I’ve still got his message; one of my more treasured swimming mementoes.

I was sure it was worth Nichola making the trip. Three months earlier she had joined the Club’s learn to swim program and was clearly a special talent. I moved her up to training with Toni and she seemed to thrive on the experience. Toni did a good job of nurturing her learn to swim training colleague. In the New Caledonia Oceania Championships Nichola qualified for the final with a heat swim that was a New Zealand twelve year old record for 50 meters long course freestyle. In the final she got fifth in a time that again set a new twelve year old record. Two races, two New Zealand records and fifth in an international event; not a bad start to Nichola’s fledgling swimming career.

A week later we flew to Sydney for the New South Wales Swimming Championships. Nichola had turned thirteen during the week. On 24 January 1994 at the Blacktown Pool she won the New South Wales thirteen year old 50 freestyle title in a New Zealand record time of 27.27 seconds. Her swimming career record was now three swims, three New Zealand records and a New South Wales Championship title. And she had yet to complete a race in the country she represented. Sixteen years later her 27.27 freestyle time still stands as the New Zealand record for thirteen year old women.

Back in New Zealand a month later Nichola swam in the New Zealand Open Championships at the Moana Pool in Dunedin. She ended up fourth in the 50 freestyle behind Toni, Anna Wilson and someone else whose name I’ve forgotten. A year later Swimming New Zealand selected Nichola for the Atlanta Pan Pacific Games. Several years after that she swam for New Zealand again in the World Short Course Championships in Indianapolis and in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. David Myer and Swimming New Zealand should have forgiven us by then but somehow I don’t think they had.

I have only been with my new Club in Auckland for eight weeks but I have noticed several talented swimmers. One of them, a fourteen year old girl, has seldom swum in competitions. In six months she hasn’t raced at all. Her mother tells me she has become so disillusioned with the sport she was about to give up. She only trained once or twice a week and said she was not interested in racing anymore. In Auckland this past weekend we had a Level 2 swim meet. She didn’t want to swim. But, by using a version of the “what’s a sundial in the shade” argument, I managed to convince her to pay the $12.00 for a late entry to swim the 50 meters freestyle. It worked; she not only won her heat in a creditable 30.70 seconds, she was the fastest swimmer of her age in the competition. And now for the scary part – her name is Nicole.

Posted in New Zealand, Racing | No Comments »

Training Gem

Monday, June 14th, 2010

By David

One or two of the comments you hear or receive by email deserve special mention. There’s been a few of these this week. First was an email comment on the Swimwatch article we did on the New Zealand master track coach, Arch Jelley. Here is what the email said.

Great article, summing up well my brother’s methods and personality, as well as putting into perspective the rather pointless comparisons often made between coaches. I sometimes claim to be Arch’s first runner, as he certainly advised and guided me when I entered athletics as a runner in 1946, after a season or two as race walker.

Arch and I came across the writings of Arthur Newton, who defied the authorities in South Africa when refused financial support for a farming venture, by determining to become a world champion distance runner. He eventually set a world time for 100 miles, although he almost collapsed on his first training run of 3 miles. One of Newton’s favorite theories was that lions and tigers did their daily training mainly by sauntering around at “below racing pace”, yet broke all records occasionally when they raced for their life, or for their quarry. Our speed work was basically Fartlek, and only when we felt like it, and the great field coach and pole-vaulter Merv Richards (of our own club) warned me that this kind of training might well create a ceiling of performance not high enough for international competition. He was to be proved correct. Runners whom I had beaten in 1951, like Jim Daly and Ernie Haskell, included far more speed conditioning work than I did, and surpassed me markedly by 1954, both representing NZ at Vancouver, and bettering my 3-mile times by about 40 seconds or more.

This kind of thing set Arch thinking, and the rest is history. Arch’s schedules came to be based on scientific knowledge of the human body in action, as well as the results of different kinds of regime in practice. And he was never surprised when people like Bill Baillie would come up with a sensational 2-mile time before they had done any speed work. Back to the lions and tigers perhaps! Hope this is of some interest.

Stan Jelley (now 83 and not running.)

Arch and Stan Jelley represent a way of thinking that brought New Zealand athletes to the top of the world. It’s basic; it’s honest; it’s fair, it’s essentially New Zealand. Ed Hillary, Rusty Robertson, Fred Allen, Arthur Lydiard – they all had it. Richard Tonks and Robbie Deans of rowing and rugby have it as well. Graham Henry, the All Black’s coach does not.

Since returning to New Zealand I have been surprised at the concern felt about the direction of elite swimming. People may talk to me more because they know Swimwatch has promoted an alternative view on how things should be done. That does not make their concerns any less genuine. These are not the views of a radical disenfranchised fringe out there in radio talk-back land. These are informed New Zealanders who think the additional $60million the New Zealand Government is about to put into elite sport, much of it at the Millennium Institute is about to be misspent.

Take the father who on Tuesday this week told me he enjoyed Swimwatch. He said he had a daughter who had been the best at her event in New Zealand but when she declined an invitation to join the Millennium Institute training group she was abandoned by the organization. Her funding was reduced. The fawning attention she had received during the courting period disappeared. It was clear, he said, that the line promoted on the other side of Auckland’s Harbor Bridge was the only acceptable line.

Take the communication’s student and ex-swimmer who pleaded with me not to publish this article. The bosses of elite swimming in New Zealand, she said, will not tolerate an alternative point of view. Dissent would hurt the sport. Dissent would see an end to Sky Sport and Murray Deaker reporting swimming events. Of course the article is being published. My country is not the Soviet empire yet. Her concern however reflected the fear in the parent who wanted to meet me but preferred it to be in a downtown coffee shop, “in case someone from the North Shore” sees us. It’s all not very healthy.

Take the coach who told me he had decided their Club would have to “do it” on their own. While his best swimmers continued to swim with him they could expect little assistance from the Millennium Institute. It was, he said, his club against the Institute.

Take the suggestion that good coaches hand over their best swimmers to some coach at the Millennium Institute for “elite” training. If that suggestion had been made by Clive Rushton when Cameron was coaching North Shore she would have dismissed it out of hand; Cameron hand over her swimmers to Clive Rushton? Yeah right. I hope Winter, Kent, Miehe and a dozen others dismiss the current idea with equal vigor.

And all these conversations took place in just the last five days. This is not Swimwatch being strident. This is simply reporting discussions that should cause those responsible for the sport concern.

It wouldn’t be so bad if swimming was making progress. In their blurb promoting swimming on the North Shore the “After the Millennium Idea” results in the table below are shown to support the brilliance of what’s happening over there. But when the results from an earlier generation of swimmers are added the brilliance dulls. Without question, we were better when New Zealanders took care of their own business.

Posted in New Zealand, Racing, Training | No Comments »

It’s Official

Monday, May 31st, 2010

By David

My New Zealand doctor warned me that the new blood pressure drug he was recommending could result in strange, very vivid dreams. I didn’t believe the guy. That sort of psychological claptrap doesn’t happen to a bloke who enjoys a New Zealand pie or likes nothing better than watching the Steelers play the Bears on a wet, bitterly cold afternoon in Chicago. I was wrong.

During most of last night I was the laundry minder for senior athletes on the world track series. I wandered through China, two or three Middle East nations and most of Europe taking care of dirty track suits and cleaning Nike running spikes. I am pretty certain the last thing the world’s best track athletes want is some West Auckland swimming coach anywhere near their laundry. And for even dreaming this invasion I apologize. Perhaps the very long day I had at a swim meet yesterday had caused my mind to wander.

Actually it was an interesting day that once again highlighted the distinction between good officials and those who should really be doing something else. In Florida a chap called Jay Thomas was one of the best. I believe his job as an American Airlines senior Captain contributed to his calm handling of a dozen of swimming’s minor crises. If a flock of geese decided to fly through the engine of my airplane above New York, I’d be happy if Jay Thomas was up front taking care of business. The way he handled the Meet Manager job when two 50 meter pools were going flat out was better entertainment that watching the swimming.

I did not feel the same about another Florida swimming official, Leslie Lunak. Several years ago we had a debate about a swimmer’s entry at a swim meet. After it was sorted out she offered to shake hands and said clearly and in front of others that the matter ended there. A week later she complained to the President of Florida Gold Coast that I had argued with her. He is now in jail but at the time he sent me a letter saying “don’t argue with officials”, which is ironic given that the real moral of the story is “don’t trust Leslie Lunac”.

Anyway yesterday, after a very good swimmer was disqualified, the question of the timing of the fly kick in the breaststroke pull out became relevant. The rule in question was FINA rule 7.1. This is what it says.

SW 7.1 After the start and after each turn, the swimmer may take one arm stroke completely back to the legs during which the swimmer may be submerged. A single butterfly kick is permitted during the first arm stroke, followed by a breaststroke kick.

The question was whether the fly kick was still legal if it was performed after the swimmer had completed the pull but still has their arms extended downward along their sides. In other words was the stroke “completed” after the pull or after the pull and the recovery of the arms to the extended above the swimmers head position? If the pull and recovery represented a full stroke then a “late” kick was legal. If just the pull represented a full stroke then a late kick was a DQ offence. Rule 7.1 is ambiguous on this point.

The responsible official at the Auckland meet was a lady called Jill. She’s been an official in Auckland for as long as I can remember. She also has the quiet, honest demeanour of a Jay Thomas; a quality acquired, I suspect from a life time of listening to excited coaches, parents and swimmers argue their cause.

In this case she asked to see the swimmer do the turn with the “delayed” kick in the pool’s diving well. She went and consulted the meet’s senior officials and came back with a decision that the word “stroke” in the FINA rule included both the pull and recovery stages. Therefore a fly kick done between the two stages was legal. It was still being done part way through the single stroke. Just as important as the outcome was the way the question was handled. No one was threatened; no one’s integrity was being questioned. An interesting interpretation of the rules was being resolved. And that’s the way it should be.

It is off the subject but an area where New Zealand swimming has it all over the Americans is in the disqualification procedure. In New Zealand every athlete gets a signed form detailing the offence, the Rule number, the name of the IOT and Referee and their signature. In other words New Zealand does what FINA rules require. In America that might happen at the National Championships but in most other meets the first the athlete knows of their crime is when their name appears on the list of results with the dreaded initials DQ. Even then it can take a full FBI and CIA investigation to find out what the DQ was for. I had a relay team disqualified in Florida once and only heard about it a week later through one of the swimmer’s parents. I complained only to discover the parent had got the cause of the disqualification story completely wrong. That whole mess could have been avoided if the meet officials had handed out properly completed disqualification forms.

An official in Florida told me they could not complete and distribute the forms because the meets in the US were so huge. That’s just nonsense. If it’s worth putting on a meet its worth doing properly. Disqualifying someone can be quite traumatic. Officials need to explain why they made that decision. If yesterday is anything to go by they seem to be able to do it well in Auckland, New Zealand. They should be able to do it just as well in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Posted in Europe, New Zealand, Racing | No Comments »

The Best of Junior Swimming

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

By David

The Auckland Swimming Center in New Zealand had their monthly Division Three meet this weekend. That’s the same meet Florida swimming call a Sub-JO Meet. I was interested to see how the American and New Zealand versions compared. My new club had nine swimmers competing; Cormac, Hana, Teigan, Ella, James, Bayleigh, Aimee, Brianna and Kiki.

The meet in Auckland was smaller than the average Florida Sub JO. Population probably accounts for a portion of the difference. However junior participation is important and the New Zealand meet was smaller than I expected. The last Sub JO meet I went to in Florida had 863 entries. I don’t know how many there were today in Auckland but it was a lot less than that number. Next month our club will have to double our entries to do our bit to increase the involvement of the area’s junior swimmers.

The smaller numbers did have one blessing. The meet was done and dusted in a bit over three hours; a vastly more enjoyable experience that the two day, 8.00am to 3.00pm, marathons I’ve been to in Florida. Somewhere between the two extremes there has to be a size that combines the best possible participation with an acceptable time commitment.

In New Zealand there has clearly been an effort to diminish the formality of the occasion. For example the meet did not use the pool’s electronic timing or score board and boys and girls swam in the same races. I thought the standard of stroke and turn judging in New Zealand was more appropriate to this level of competition. On several occasions I noticed Auckland officials overlook minor infringements that would have received the ultimate sanction in the United States. That might be a swimming thing or could simply reflect New Zealand’s more caring society.

Given the effort to diminish the formality of the New Zealand meet, it is odd that they persist with a full marshalling process. That convention has long been discarded by most meets in the United States where Clubs are responsible for getting their swimmers to the start. In this instance I like the American system. It encourages swimmers to take responsibility for getting to the start of their race and prepares them for the procedure used in most Grand Prix, World Cup and Mare Nostrum international meets.

The New Zealand meet was quieter than the American version. That is hardly surprising. New Zealanders are a more reserved people and America is the home of loud sporting cheers. However, I might encourage our guys to be a bit more vocal. I’m not promoting the mass hysteria practiced by some American teams. Thank God, that would never work here. Some vocal team support wouldn’t hurt though. After all, it is a sporting contest not a Sunday morning church service.

In Auckland and in Florida ribbons are presented to those swimmers who placed in each race. At this level of competition I prefer the award procedure that used to be practiced in New Zealand’s Wellington swimming center. Ribbons, there, were awarded to swimmers who swam personal best times. The sticker on the back recorded the swimmer’s event and their new personal best. It was possible to be last in a race and still be rewarded for a PB. It was also possible to be first and miss out. I liked the concept. I think it better rewarded personal effort. Some readers will probably brand this as bleeding heart, “no one should lose” liberalism. I don’t agree. At any level of competition a personal best is a win and should be recognized.

The differences between the meets could not disguise one overwhelming similarity. The enthusiasm, application, nervousness and standard of swimming of your average pre-teen American and New Zealander were common and infectious. New Zealand’s senior swimmers might not be able to match the speed of Phelps, Lochte, Hoff, Piersol, Coughlin and Schmitt but it’s not through any difference at this level. In fact I thought the standard of starts and turns, stroke mechanics and fitness on display in Auckland were probably marginally ahead of what I’d seen in my seven years watching Sub JO swimming in the United States. The inevitable conclusion is that somewhere between the enthusiastic events in Auckland this afternoon and swimming in the Olympic Games the Americans are doing it better.

So, thank you Cormac, Hana, Teigan, Ella, James, Bayleigh, Aimee, Brianna and Kiki for a great afternoon’s entertainment. See you at practice on Monday as we prepare to do just a bit better at next month’s Division Three meet. Who knows one day you may be able to take on the next generation of American stars.

Posted in New Zealand, Racing | No Comments »

Fiasco in Europe

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

By David

Hate is a strong word; not to be used lightly. It pretty much sums up the way I feel about travel stories. You know the ones? This is Uncle Bill holding up the Leaning Tower in Pisa or Aunt Mary trying to make the guard at Buckingham Palace laugh or Doris, who’s into genealogy, inspecting her great, great grandmother’s grave in a church yard just outside Dorking. After long overseas trips friends of my parents’ would often come to our place for an evening of slides showing us the places they’d been. I must have seen a thousand shots of clouds out the aeroplane window leaving Auckland or arriving in London. It beats me how they knew the difference. The clouds sure looked the same.

To the best of my knowledge, Jane is prepared to discuss just about any subject with her father. Politics – she’s slightly left of even me, religion – Jane’s school cured us both, gossip – great and often and hypocrisy – condemned above all else; very little is on her taboo list.

And so, throwing caution to the wind, I am now going to tell you a travel story that eleven years after it took place Jane still refuses to discuss.

I got the idea leaving the Clive Memorial Pool. That was my first mistake. No one has ever had a good idea leaving the Clive Pool. With some perspicacity Jane once described the pool as “If concrete could burn, it would smell like the Clive Pool. Imagine it for a second. Old, dirty concrete soaked in chlorine, on fire.” My idea was that instead of flying between the World Cup swim meets in Europe we should hire a camper van – in America they are called them recreation vehicles. The next day I visited Air New Zealand’s travel office in Hastings and booked the van. We would pick it up in downtown Amsterdam and drive to the first meet in Paris, then on to Gelsenkirchen in Germany, Imperia in Italy and back to Amsterdam to fly home.

I convinced a very young Jane our journey of 2181 miles (3490 kilometers) would be the experience of a life time. We’d park beside Dutch canals, trundle through Monet’s Field of Poppies, climb through the peaks and cols of the Swiss Alps and cruise the bays and coves of the Italian Riviera.

Unfortunately it wasn’t quite like that. We had no problem collecting the van and set off on the 310 mile (496 kilometer) trip to Paris. About 200 miles later we arrived in Lille and I took a wrong turn. All night I drove east wondering why the 100 miles to Paris was taking so long. The sign “Welcome to Luxembourg” didn’t seem right so I stopped to check. I had driven 343 miles in the wrong direction and was now 303 miles away from Paris. It took all that day to get to Paris. After 846 miles (1343 kilometers) and 24 hours in the van Jane was expected to swim the World Cup heats in just ten hours. I relented and booked her into one of the team hotels. She managed a personal best in the 50 butterfly. She always was a tough little bugger and on that occasion showed it in full measure.

The next meet was in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. We had time so decided to stop for a night in Loan, the picture perfect ancient French capital. Finally we were experiencing the joys of motoring through Europe. At about three in the morning I was woken by someone banging on the van door. Foolishly, and against Jane’s advice, I opened the door. In very broken English, a man in his early twenties explained that he and his girl friend had parked under trees not far from the van. Their car was stuck in the mud. Could we pull them out? I got out to inspect the problem and discovered that the car was deeply buried. There was no way we could do anything about it until the morning. I was also surprised by the partially clothed appearance of his girl friend. Perhaps, I said, we could call the local police to help. No, he didn’t want that. They would wait until the morning. I went back to van and slept until seven when four police cars came screaming by full of lights and sirens. Several policemen surrounded the car and advanced towards it with hands poised over their revolvers. I started the van and headed towards Germany. Jane was right – don’t open the door to strangers at 3.00 in the morning.

The Gelsenkirchen World Cup went well. Jane had a good meet and swam another personal best in the 100 IM, which was also a Wellington regional record at the time. Our only van problem was a punctured front tire. However I changed the tire without too much difficulty and set out on the 708 mile (1132 kilometers) leg to our next stop in Imperia, Italy. It was a warm Sunday. For 200 miles everything was fine until, just south of Frankfurt, near a small town called Weinheim, we blew another tire. A passing German motorist called a tow truck. We were taken to a garage and told we would need to wait until the morning to have both tires repaired. It was lunch time the next day before that was done and we set off again for Imperia – 500 miles away. That might not sound like much but this particular 500 miles is over the massive Col de St. Bernard that separates Switzerland and Italy and through a 40 mile series of narrow lanes and alleys that lead into Imperia. Finally, at 3.00 am, we pulled into the parking lot beside Imperia’s “Piscina Felice Cascione”. Jane’s first heat was just five hours away.

Two days later we hit the road again for the 815 mile (1304 kilometer) journey back to Amsterdam. We picked up an interesting English hitchhiker on the way who guided us into Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. A few hours later we deposited the van back in Amsterdam and sank gratefully into KLM seats for the 14 hour flight to Singapore. There are two morals to this story. If you are doing the World Cup circuit, it may be boring but go by air. And the second – if you ever have a good idea leaving the Clive Memorial Swimming Pool, do something else.

That was the same trip I had to chase a thief in Amsterdam Airport who snatched and ran off with a bag containing our passports and money. Fortunately I caught him and rescued our belongings. Back in New Zealand on the trip from the airport in Auckland to Napier, our car, the “Blue Beast” broke down and we arrived in Napier on the back of an AA recovery truck. My wife Alison seemed to think it was all very funny.

And Jane? Well she still won’t talk about it.

Posted in Europe, Racing | No Comments »

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