By David

I must begin by apologizing to any American readers. This post is going to be all about the Commonwealth Games. In swimming terms the Commonwealth Games is not the world’s best meet. Certainly the Pan Pacific Games being held in the US shortly will see some far better swimming. However New Zealand is besotted with the Commonwealth Games. Sport’s funding decisions, pages of news print and hours of broadcast time are spent predicting results and analyzing performances.

So, how is New Zealand going to get on in the swimming pool at this year’s Games in New Delhi, India? It is an important Commonwealth Games for swimming. For years the National Coach has been promising us an international swimming nirvana. This time she must deliver. Whatever the result, she owns it. Four years ago in Melbourne Australia, New Zealand won six medals. The table below shows the details of these results. If we don’t do better than that in New Delhi, the past four years of effort and money will have been wasted. If we don’t do better than that I’m told SPARC are not going to be very happy and will probably cut the state financial lifeline that keeps swimming afloat – if you’ll excuse the pun.

One indication of how New Zealand might fare in New Delhi is the current Commonwealth rankings. The table below shows the name and place of the best New Zealander in each event, based on three swimmers per Commonwealth country. If the best New Zealander is outside the Commonwealth’s top eight the table just records this as “NA” and “outside the top eight”.

Fortunately medals at Olympic and Commonwealth Games are not decided by world rankings. If they were Peter Snell would never have won the Olympic 800 track title. So while the ranking data suggests New Zealand will only win one bronze medal in the women’s 50 backstroke it is entirely possible we could do better than that. Sadly it is equally possible we could do worse. Australia, Canada and South Africa are as strong as ever but in the past four years swimming in the UK has improved dramatically. The efforts of Swettenham and the injection of a truck load of lottery money have borne fruit. And in the Commonwealth Games an improvement in the UK is a quadruple problem for New Zealand. Good UK swimmers can represent Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales.

I think New Zealand will do better than one bronze medal. In particular I rate Melissa Ingram as a very good athlete. In World Cup events a year ago she was superb; competing against and beating the world’s best. On that tour she showed the character that it takes to win medals at an international Games. I also like Bell; he’s a bit of a rebel and that often helps win races.

Just to do as well as New Zealand did four years ago is not going to be easy. Winning the eight or nine medals required to demonstrate progress and justify the financial resources provided to those responsible for the sport’s elite performance is unlikely. For years New Zealand has been told swimming is building for the future. Well, the future is now.

By David

It’s fun being on holiday in New Zealand. Best of all it is an opportunity to catch up on a decade of lost gossip. Last night I spoke to Dick Quax, once the track world record holder at 5000 meters and Olympic silver medalist at the same distance. Dick is now a pretty important politician and will shortly stand in the election for representatives to run the new Auckland super city. He’s a member of the Act Party which would normally put him too far to the right to attract my vote. On this occasion I’d compromise principle to give him a vote; he’s a good guy and would do an excellent job. Besides I voted for Margaret Thatcher the first time she was leader of the British Conservatives; so there is a precedent.

Years ago Dick coached track athletics in the US. It was fun to compare notes of my experience doing the same thing in swimming. We agreed on the good, the bad and the ugly. But that’s for another day. Eventually our conversation got around to coaching in New Zealand; the death of Arthur Lydiard, Arch Jelley’s appointment to the Coaching Hall of Fame and the comparison between the two coaches.

After we finished talking, I decided to Google Arthur and Arch to see if anyone had written a comparison. There was surprisingly little to find. However I did come across an article written by Joseph Romanos for the June 2007 issue of the New Zealand magazine “VO2 Max” [Warning: large PDF file. If clicking through, you're looking for page 114, which looks like this].  In it Joseph makes the following observation:

“Trying to evaluate the impact of an elite level coach, two factors become most important – longevity and the number of high-class performers the coach produces. So, while I salute Arch Jelley for coaching such a remarkable runner as John Walker, the athletics coach who gets most credit must be Arthur Lydiard. Lydiard coached for half a century from the early 1950s, and revolutionized thinking on training for distance runners. He was innovative and inspirational. To produce one champion is quite something, but Lydiard coached Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry Magee, John Davies, Bill Baillie, Jeff Julian and Ray Puckett in the late 1950s-early 1960s. Later he coached runners like Dick Tayler and Heather Thompson and advised Ian Ferguson and company, the canoeing legends of the 1980s, plus triathletes, swimmers, horse trainers, rugby players and goodness knows who else.”

Before commenting on the shortcomings of this extract I must tell you that Joseph Romanos is the best writer on sport in New Zealand. He writes well, he knows sport around the world and he’s fair. When I was last coaching in New Zealand I made my share of mistakes and had some wins as well. On several occasions Joseph publically pointed out both in full and fair measure. I should also say that the balance of his article in “VO2 Max” is very good. Joseph praises the long line of coaches that have served New Zealand’s athletes well. There are of course some names he’s included among the greats that I don’t think should be there and some names he’s left out that should have received a mention; Ross Anderson in swimming for example. For some reason Joseph never liked Ross Anderson but the man was a very good swimming coach.

The article also makes the point that coaches in New Zealand have not always been treated terribly well. Isn’t that the truth? The single biggest difference I noticed between coaching here and in the US was the status, respect and importance the Americans give their coaches. I couldn’t believe it. From what I’ve seen New Zealand is improving. That’s important. Good coaches produce good athletes. They need looking after.

So while there is much to admire in Joseph’s “VO2 Max” piece the paragraph copied above falls well short of Joseph’s normal high standard. First of all he leaves the impression that Arch coached for five minutes and Walker was his only good runner. That’s just not true. Arch is in the 85-90 years Master’s category now and in 2010 still produced the national 1500 meter champion, Hamish Carson. For longevity Arch is in the super league. Joseph then produces a list of great athletes coached by Arthur but, apart from John Walker, fails to mention any of the fine runners coached by Arch. For example, double Olympians Neville Scot, Robbie Johnson and Rod Dixon or American mile record holder Steve Scott; or the following athletes who were either National Champions or represented New Zealand, Alison Wright, Ian Babe, Ian Studd (Commonwealth Games bronze medalist in 1966), Sonia Barry, Denis Norris, Ray Batton, Maree Bunce, Andrew Campbell, Sharon Higgins, Michael Hindmarsh, Glenys Kroon, Jared Letica, Geraldine MacDonald, Gary Palmer, John and Val Robinson, Hazel Stewart, Mark Tonks and Lloyd Walker. And that’s not a bad list of “high class performers”.

Joseph then refers to Arthurs work with swimmers. Now that’s true. Arthur even included a chapter on the work he did with me in his biography “Arthur Lydiard – Master Coach”. Without Arthur’s input I would never have coached nine national representatives, four Olympians and one current Master’s world record holder. But the same thing exactly could be said about Arch. Every day I apply many of the principles and methods I first learned from Arch; especially as they relate to speed work and anaerobic conditioning. My swimmers have Arch to thank for their fartlek sessions and the 6×50 on a minute final time trial. Most importantly Arch curbed my enthusiasm for killing swimmers off with impossibly difficult anaerobic sets.

The real problem in a discussion like this is leaving the impression that one is devaluing Arthur’s legacy. I would never do that. Four of the New Zealand runners mentioned by Joseph were Olympic medalists. The work Arthur did in Finland earned him that Country’s highest awards. The care and attention he paid to helping me was generous beyond belief. My point is only that Joseph Romanos should not promote Arthur’s record by devaluing either Arch’s longevity or coaching record. Arthur Lydiard would never have done that.

By David

I was invited to dinner last night at the prestigious Palm Beach Sailfish Club. My host is a member of our master’s team. The Club was formed in 1914 and today provides the best buffet dinner I’ve ever seen. Lobster tails, scallops, oysters, green bean casserole, roast beef, baked duck, sushi, pork, mama’s apple pie, shot glass deserts, a cheese board to die for, crabs, fresh fruit, prawns and buckets of Russian caviar; it’s all there. They also serve the best vodka martini in a country noted for serving good vodka martinis. I spent the evening happily picking away at several lobster tails sprinkled with the Russian caviar.

On our way to dinner my host was explaining the social significance of The Palm Beach Daily News. Evidently this unashamedly society rag has little literary merit and is known locally as the Shiny Sheet. I’m told that members of the Palm Beach “would be if they could be” clique actually hire PR consultants to get their photograph into its pages. Anyone who manages to get their image into the Shiny Sheet on five or more occasions is known as a swan. My host is a swan, a status achieved, I was assured, without the aid of a PR consultant. Some of us just have it and others have to pay for it – or so it seems.

Evidentially one well known Palm Beach swan, renowned for her expensive PR advisors, has fallen upon hard times. During her description of this parvenu my host used the term “schadenfreude”. I had never heard of the word. So, when I arrived home, I looked it up. Here, with thanks to Wikipedia, is what I found.

“Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This German word is used as a loanword in English and some other languages.”

What Wikipedia didn’t provide was any indication of whether schadenfreude was right or wrong, good or bad. I needed to look further afield. The Book of Proverbs was pretty clear, “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth.” Many philosophers seem to agree. Aristotle, Burton and Adorno portrayed the emotion of schadenfreude as trivial and mean. Of course they are right when the subject of the misfortune is an innocent, struck down through no fault of his own: a fellow human killed by a drunk driver or paralyzed by a brain tumor. To feel any joy in that sort of misfortune perverts the very meaning of humanity.

But does that standard apply when adversity comes as a result of an act or decision that caused hurt to another? Is schadenfreude good when it is directed at arrogant, pompous fools who tumble from grace as a direct result of their effort to cause harm to another? When that happens surely the subject of the fools’ attacks is justified in feeling a moment of schadenfreude. In that instance schadenfreude might not be humanity but it is most certainly human. On these occasions, “I told you so” and “what goes around comes around” and “karma” are understandable and right. These fools deserve no better.

Coaching is an occupation full of opportunities to indulge in schadenfreude. I hate to think of how often Bill Parcells has been shafted by a player or an owner and then watched their career or team crumble. Sir Alex Ferguson must have experienced the same thing. Coaching swimming certainly has more than its fair share of volunteers ready to kick the coach around only to see their own fortunes slide down the pool drain. Who hasn’t experienced parents who cart their offspring from club to club because the previous coach was “no damn good?” I’ve never seen these swimmers succeed. How often have swim coaches had good swimmers dash off to a big club somewhere in search of nirvana? These swimmers usually improve for a bit before their careers slowly slip away. Dozens of teams disintegrate into hollow shells after their zealous owners dismiss a good coach. From Parcells and Ferguson to the nation’s swim coaches all this is ample fodder for a bit of coaching schadenfreude. Or is it?

I take my lead from Lydiard. I was at his home the weekend a New Zealand track world record holder came to tell him she was moving to another coach. At the time Lydiard was annoyed and predicted her career would suffer. A year or so later I was back in Auckland and we discussed what had happened to his ex-runner and the accuracy of his earlier predictions.

The new coach had changed her training to include a lot more speed work. The runner said this was progress. She was ending each day completely spent; something that never happened while she was with Lydiard. Her new team was the right move, made at the right time. Her best was yet to come, she said. The new coach also altered her running style to something he said was “more modern” than Lydiard’s technique. They had recruited nutritionalists, sport’s scientists, sports psychologists and hypnotherapists to smooth the path to running fame. To make matters worse they used TV, radio and the press to tell the world how much better they were doing things.

Sure enough though, the runner began to run slower. She was forever getting injured and needing small medical procedures. She was being beaten in races she would have won previously. Even in New Zealand she was being beaten. Surprisingly, Lydiard didn’t seem to care. “I’ve got too many other things to do,” he said. “Now what are your swimmers doing today?” In the circumstances a bit of schadenfreude would have been reasonable and justified. But there are better things to do.

By David

It’s surprising how easy it is to get used to killing. When I was ten or eleven my father informed me that my Sunday chore was to find two wild goats and kill them to feed our dogs for the coming week. For eight years I did this. That’s about 832 goats. I remember the first kill like it was yesterday. Sadly, goat number 832 did not leave such a lasting impression. When I graduated from University I became a Management Trainee for Thomas Borthwick & Sons Ltd. one of New Zealand’s largest meat packing companies. They had a policy of making their trainees work at all the positions down the sheep and beef processing chains. Some of the town raised trainees asked to be excused the task of actually killing. Thanks to the 832 goats plus a couple of hundred wild pigs and a few dozen deer I was okay with captive bolt shooting steers and cutting the throats of a few of New Zealand’s 60 million sheep.

In fact I began to take great pride in being a humane executioner. Could I perform the task so quickly and cleanly that death was instant and painless: or as far as I could tell, instant and painless. Most of my mates doing the same job felt the same way. Anyone who screwed up and left an animal bleeding and alive was roundly roasted. And they had little sympathy for us University types with our flash degrees. We may have had years of scholarly reading but here life and death was determined by the keenness of a knife’s blade.

Our meat plant in Fielding killed 9000 lambs per day along three chains. That’s 3000 per chain in seven hours, or 428 lambs in an hour, or seven each minute, or one every 13 seconds. And God help anyone who was slower than that. Normal workers were paid by the number processed. One lamb in 20 seconds was costing them money. Knives would soon beat a rhythm on anything metal alerting the killer to his tardy ways. I did that job for three weeks. The mathematicians among you will have worked out that I killed 45,000 lambs in that time. Actually it was just a little over 46,000. We worked a Saturday morning in the middle week. Again I remember lamb number one – a plump Romney Cross destined for London’s Smithfield Meat Market. Lamb number 46,000 meant only that it was time to move on to some less bloody occupation. Jane now lives across the road from Smithfield Meat Market. It’s become a very trendy part of town; nightclubs, bars and great English pubs. On her way to work though, if she looks closely, I suspect she too will find several year 2010 versions of my first Romney lamb.

Shooting cattle requires just as much care to ensure a clean kill. At Fielding we killed 500 cattle a day; about one each minute. The steer I remember best however, was one I killed in Perth, Scotland. I’d spent three years building Europe’s most modern meat plant. It came time for the first animal to be killed. The beast was donated by a local farmer, James Stewart. The owners of our company arrived from London and the construction workers gathered to see the plant’s first death. I was a touch nervous as I aimed the captive bolt between the animal’s Aberdeen Angus eyes. Bang and thankfully the beast dropped and lay still – a clean kill.

But factory killing can’t compare to the search and hunt for wild goats. I was not allowed to use a multi shot magazine or telescopic sights. Each bullet had to be hand fed, each shot had to count. Miss and your prey would quickly disappear into the safety of the area’s dense bush. The easiest way to hunt was to climb to the top of the dark greywacke cliffs that surrounded my home and walk along the tops searching downhill for an unsuspecting herd. I’m not the best shot in the world and have the added disadvantage of shooting left handed. To be sure of my bullet finding its mark I needed to get closer than 50 meters from the target. When goats are frightened, but unsure where the danger is coming from, they inevitably run uphill. Stay hidden and they will dash towards you making it an easy task to collect animal number two. After a few months I got pretty good at avoiding a long heavy carry by having the week’s two goats die close to each other. It took another half hour to skin and gut the animals. Then it was time to grill thin slices of goat heart over an open fire or take a short nap in the warm afternoon sun. On a good day there was time to do both before lugging the carcasses home.

There is something special about sitting high in the New Zealand hills looking down on a thousand acres of rough green pasture and dark native bush. The wide Hangaroa River is always present, brown with silt in winter and crystal clear in summer. There is a size and peace about all this that no city can match. Cities have other qualities; other fine features. But for me the peace of a fire on a deserted hillside on a warm afternoon is a privilege without peer. Without question a perfect place to spend one’s youth.

By David

Nothing excites administrators and coaches more than the thought of a swimmer scratching from an event. I’ve heard swimmers accused of all sorts of character flaws at the very mention of scratching from a race. The most popular slurs involve patriotism and cowardice.

The patriotism argument goes something like this. Swimming this event may not be in your best interests. It may lay waste to your chance of setting a record in your best event due to start in fifteen minutes. We know you are the fastest qualifier for tonight’s final and need to get back to the hotel to eat and rest. It is unfortunate that you feel ill and have been running to the toilet all night. That teres major muscle tear and 103 degree fever is certainly bad luck. BUT – your team needs you. There are points to be won. Don’t you understand that the pariahs at Mongoose Aquatics are three points ahead of us? You could change all that. Your team’s future is hanging by a thread. This moment is what it means to be a Shining Light Aquatics American (insert here New Zealander, Australian or any one of the world’s other 195 countries).

The cowardice argument goes something like this. Swimming is more than a sport. It’s about character. Do you have what it takes to be successful in life? Are you a man – always said irrespective of gender? Are you tough? Can you take it – whatever it is? All these questions will be answered positively or negatively by the decision you make right now. Scratch and you will reveal character flaws that will shadow and haunt you through life. Good people do not scratch from a swimming race. Swim and you lift yourself above the common herd. You will have shown character. You will be a leader. Yours will be “the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son” – also said irrespective of gender.

It’s all rubbish of course. We’re talking about a swimming race, a sport, a game. This is not Passchendaele or the Fall of Saigon. But many administrators miss that point. The Chairman of a Club Jane swam for wrote to the team’s Board after a Caribbean Championships asking for Jane to be sanctioned. According to the Chairman, Jane’s felony was scratching from the 50 meters butterfly final. She had, he said, let the team down, lost the team points and set a bad example to younger swimmers. The truth is, I entered Jane in the heat of the butterfly race on the first day of the Championships as a warm-up swim, never expecting she would make the final. However she performed better than I anticipated and ended up comfortably in the top eight. The butterfly final however was dangerously close to the final of Jane’s favorite event, the 200 meters breaststroke. I decided to play it safe and scratched her from the fly. Jane won the breaststroke in a time that is still the Caribbean Championship record for that event. A wise decision had been made. Fortunately the Club’s Board agreed and dismissed the Chairman’s call for censure.

The decision to scratch needs to be based on what is in the best interests of the individual involved. I ask one simple question. If I had access to the information available at the time of the scratching would I have entered the swimmer in the first place? If I’d known the swimmer was not feeling well, or was likely to perform better in another event, or had hurt herself skiing, or was going to be late for her sister’s birthday would I have pushed ahead with the entry in the first place. Does the new information mean the swimmer would not have been even entered? If the answer to that question is even a mild probably, then scratching is the proper option; everyone lives to fight another day. Insist on swimming because of some spurious moral good and we all suffer. Worse than that, very probably, another swimmer is about to be added to the list of teenagers who dropped out of swimming early in their careers. This is sport not some total transformation boot camp. Even Arthur Lydiard, and he was a really tough bugger, said. “If in doubt, leave it out.”

This “scratching” philosophy means my swimmers do scratch from more races than other teams. At Mare Nostrum last year our team of five swimmers scratched from at least one event on each of the seven days of competition. Some might see that as a problem; I do not. However, do not expect a relaxed attitude to scratching to act as any protection from partisan parents. Some time ago I was accused of forcing a swimmer to compete in a swimming race. It does not take a particularly perspicacious mind to determine that the content of this article makes that suggestion really, really unlikely. However I had to explain all this at a stressful and unnecessary hearing. The complaint was found to have no substance. So there you have it; in the short space of about four years, two complaints – one for not forcing a swimmer to compete and the other for forcing a swimmer into the pool. And both wrong. It’s right what they say, you know, “there’s now’t so queer as folk.”