Note: This post was written by a guest contributor who has commented here several times, such as on Pan Pacs Preview a week ago.

Over the last couple of weeks, these under-18 versions of their senior counterparts were held in Maui and Singapore respectively - New Zealand sending small teams to both, their fortunes unfortunately mirroring those of the senior Pan Pac team – getting better, but not as quickly as the rest of the world.

Firstly, special mention must be made of Gareth Kean’s 1:57.78 200 back in Maui, currently 14th in the world and 3rd equal in the Commonwealth. Stripping away the Swimming New Zealand hype, he is a genuine contender in Delhi. What was even more impressive is that his improvement over his 1:58.5 at Pan Pacs was almost all on the 3rd 50, a 30.45 vs. a 31.05. He clearly learned from his pacing mistake in Irvine (I’m sure some clear water and racing in lane 4 helped too). Watching his race at Pan Pacs, it looks like the prime determinant of whether he only makes the finals or instead medals in Delhi and beyond will be how much he can improve on his walls – his swimming is world class, but his turns aren’t much better than solid age groupers’.

It will be a measure of his class to see how quickly he can get back into hard work, if he manages to again improve in Delhi with such a short (4 weeks) build-up, New Zealand swimming fans should be rightfully excited.

New Zealand’s other outstanding backstroke prospect, Sophia Batchelor, didn’t fare as well as Kean in Maui, finishing roughly a second off her best in all her events except the 100 free. She broke Rebecca Perrott’s long-standing record in this event and once again SNZ got overly excited, saying the record was 24 years old when it was 34 years old. They also credit Sophia’s 2:06 in the final of the 200 Free as being a PB, when she in fact swam a 2:02 in March and has swum under 2:06 numerous times since then (including a 2:03 in the heats in Maui). They also say she swam a worrying 2:34 in her 200 IM heat, when she in fact did a 2:24. SNZ screw-ups aside, I’m sure Batchelor, at just 15, will be stronger for the experience and back to her best at NZ Short Course NAGS in late September.

The other two pool swimmers in Maui, Sam Lucie-Smith and Sam Lee also had up and down meets. Lucie-Smith has steadily dropped her 200 Free time and again PB’d with a 2:02.8, which puts her in the conversation for the promising womens 4×200 free relay that is building towards London. She also raced the final of the 400 Free, but finished 2 seconds off the 4:17 she swam at the 2009 NAGS – back then it looked as if she may have been a quality 400 free prospect but she has subsequently failed to recapture that form. Butterflyer Sam Lee was also off her best, swimming slower in her 200 Fly than she did at the 2009 Junior Pan Pacs 20 months ago, and also finishing off her PB in the 100 Fly after flirting with being the first Kiwi woman under 60 seconds last year.

At the Youth Olympics in Singapore, the story was much the same. The SNZ hype machine never misses out on an opportunity to pump young male freestylers up as the second coming of Danyon Loader, and Matt Stanley was no exception. He swam a solid 3:56 in his 400 Free, but must have been a little disappointed after clocking a short course 3:48 prior to the meet. He then came 5th in the 200 in a 1:51, a time which would have placed him 6th in Maui, indicating that there were very few swimming powerhouses that sent full strength teams to Singapore. These were both good swims, but comparisons to Loader are unfair and unwarranted. Backstroker Renee Stothard was close to her best, while Chloe Francis was relatively disappointing, failing to back up a good 200 IM heat in the final. Francis also missed out in her other events, most notably in the 200 free, after putting down an awesome 2:01.2 in March she only managed a 2:03 in Singapore.

The most frustrating thing about these results is that SNZ seems to pick our national teams as if we are one of the leading swimming nations in the world. We sent 4 swimmers to Maui and 3 to Singapore – why did we split them up? We don’t have the luxury of sending a ‘development’ team to meets like these and I understand that cost of travel is a legitimate issue so why didn’t we just send everyone to one meet, even if it was the weaker Youth Olympics (on the basis of experiencing a multi-sport event.) When we do this, swimmers miss out on racing in relays, which I think are hugely important and lift the best out of many people, and being able to support swimmers in lots of races, rather than one or two a session. I also think this attitude pervades the selection criteria for these meets, I appreciate we need to send high quality teams to these events but for those swimmers on the fringes it can be the difference between quitting and continuing. A case in point of this would be Tash Hind; she had always been a solid, if unspectacular, age-grouper and was given the opportunity to race in the womens 4×200 relay at Beijing after finishing 4th in a relatively slow 2:04.8 at the Olympic trials. Since then, she’s dropped to a 1:58.8 and looks to have room for improvement.

One final note from the meet in Maui, in the mens 4×100 medley relay, which New Zealand (Kean, Simpson, Bell, Burrows) won in an incredible upset in 2009, but weren’t even able to field a team to defend the title in 2010. The USA under 18 team swam faster than our senior team did at Pan Pacs, NZ faster on 3 legs, but 1.5 sec slower on the butterfly – a massive worry for a Kiwi group that looked to be medal contenders in London.

It’s not an easy read. Twice I’ve read it. Once quickly and, realising the shortcomings in my understanding, a second time slowly. I’m still not sure I appreciate all that it has to say. The problem is, it’s not well written. Poor punctuation, contradictory facts, bad grammar and a really impressive use of jargon make comprehension difficult. Here are examples of what I mean.

The “Athlete Life Plan” tells me “Currently 17 out of the 31 carded athletes are based at MISH”. The “Service Plan” however claims, “Of the 27 carded swimmers 18 are based at MISH. .” Besides the puzzling use of two full stops, I do hope Swimming New Zealand knows how many swimmers it has in the program and where they live. The huge number of reports athletes are required to provide seems a little pointless if there is some doubt about how many swimmers should be sending them in.
The report has dozens of sentences that could be used in high school texts as examples of the very best in self important jargon. Try these two examples. “Lead providers will create, communicate and advocate best practice in each area required” or “All planned services must be specifically aligned towards achieving performance oriented goals.” Very few of us have the legal training necessary to understand this gobbledygook. Some would say such doublespeak is simply a matter of overwhelming the swimming audience with technical and unfamiliar words. Or is it deliberate confusion to benefit the authors.
Early in the report we are told “Swimmers and Coach to meet with Head Coach Mark Regan to outline IPP by one month following the given dates (April and October).” Later in the report we are instructed to “Provide a proposed IPP (individual performance plan) to the SNZ GMPP within one month of selection All forms provided must be returned by due date.” This time there is no full stop after “selection”. Perhaps that’s where the additional full stop earlier in the report came from. The important point though is that one instruction requires us to meet with Head Coach Regan a month after April or October and the other requires us to send an IPP report to Jan Cameron within a month of selection. Is it a meeting or NZ Post? Is it Regan or Cameron? In most circles that would be called confusing.

The report doesn’t seem to know what to call Jan Cameron. She’s referred to as the General Manager of Performance Pathways (GMPP), the SNZ General Manager of Performance and Pathways, the General Manager (GM) and in one instance Swimming New Zealand General Manager (SNZ GM). One can only hope the last two are not Freudian views of the sport’s future. As Freud himself put it, perhaps we are “justified in inferring from them the presence of restrained or repressed intentions and intentions.” (Freud, An Autobiographical Study (1925))

The next example still has me confused. Here is what it says, “The level and amount of carding support available by NZAS PROVIDERS will be commensurate with the swimmers performance and their world ranking using the qualifying standard 800 FINA points for 2008 for 2011 and 2010 for 1012.” “Swimmers performance” needs an apostrophe. I’m not sure why “providers” needs to be in capitals and being as 1012 is only noted as the year of the Martyrdom of Alphege in Greenwich, London, I assume 1012 should be 2012.
There are a dozen other examples of these errors. I would be concerned if the resulting confusion was deliberate. Certainly the report is vague on any specifics that could hold the authors accountable for their performance. For example the organization’s target for this year’s Commonwealth Games is defined as “Podium finishes at commonwealth Games” Note the missed capital in Commonwealth but more importantly no quantification of how many podium finishes the managers and coaches who run elite swimming in New Zealand are responsible for winning; certainly no mention of gold medals. Two medals of any sort and by this definition the bosses of elite swimming in New Zealand can and probably will call themselves successful. In the case of the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 London Olympics the authors do set themselves the most minimal of targets; a medal of any type. Why are Cameron and Regan so reluctant to say, “We’re going to win a race”? With swimmers like Ingram, Palmer and Hind in their midst what’s the matter with setting out to win the bloody thing? The talent of those swimmers deserves no less. To the new and casual observer this plan looks like everybody is accountable for everything they do except the authors. For them this plan is just a good old fashioned escape clause.

Certainly the athletes covered by this report are accountable. I was recently responsible for coaching a swimmer who was on the United States national team. She didn’t have to complete anything like the number of reports and tests required in New Zealand. She had won an Olympic gold medal though. In the table below I have attempted to simplify the bureaucratic procedures New Zealand’s 27 (or is it 31) carded swimmers must observe.

All this analysis and reporting makes me wonder how Kenyan runners ever win a race. None of them have all this stuff. Quite a few don’t even own a pair of running shoes until pretty late in their careers. They sure can run fast though. Why is that? Come to think of it, I do know how they do it – they run a lot.

On the other hand I have some sympathy for our guys. After all this reporting, analysis, examination and investigation, if they have the time and can dredge up the energy; they can pop into the pool for a short swim.

After a decade of trying, the boss of New Zealand swimming, Jan Cameron, has finally managed to guide an athlete to a medal at the Pan Pacific Games; a bronze in the Woman’s 50 backstroke, won by Emily Thomas. The medal is both a wonderful achievement and an “about time” poor reward. For Emily Thomas it is a wonderful achievement. Nothing can or should detract from the success she has earned at a world class competition. It is not easy to win a medal of any type at a Pan Pacific Games. Without any qualification at all, Thomas’s performance is a very good one.
From a national point of view however one bronze medal is scant return for a decade of spending our tax dollars. For ten years swimming has spent millions on its administration and elite program. A return at the Pan Pacific Games of one bronze medal is not sufficient. In the commercial world one financial bronze medal for ten years of effort by some fine athlete employees and millions of dollars invested would have the shareholders demanding a change of management. Swimwatch may be the only voice saying as much but believe us we’re not the only ones thinking it.

Just as distressing as the results from Irvine, California is the spin fed to the New Zealand media. It seems that if you are not performing, then you have to spin. In New Zealand, the swimming may be a bit of a struggle but the spin is first class. Here is what we mean.

After the first morning’s heats Cameron was interviewed on Radio Sport. The journalist was interested in finding out why Moss Burmester had struggled in his heat of the 200 butterfly. Cameron clearly did not want the conversation to go down that path and instead said she was more interested in the six personal best times swum that morning. There are two things disturbing about that. Firstly, it is always important to examine the reasons why something has gone wrong. Why has a good swimmer like Moss Burmester struggled at this meet? Has he been training badly; is he injured or have the individuals responsible for his career been providing him with bad advice? Cameron needed to address these questions. The Radio Sport journalist should not have been as easily put off by an administrator trying to dodge the issue. And secondly the announcement of six personal best times was classic spin. The six PBs were true enough. What Cameron omitted to tell Radio Sport’s listeners was that there had been thirteen swims that morning. Therefore the teams PB ratio was a poor 46%. Any team recording less than 50% needs to look seriously at their program. Most teams aim to be in the 70% range.

The Coach appointed by Cameron to guide this team was reported as saying that “he’s not worried about comparisons with the world’s super powers.” What sort of nonsense is that? This Australian is the recipient of the best support New Zealand has to offer and he’s not interested in how we stack up against the world’s best? Perhaps we need someone who is interested in being compared with and beating Lochte, Phelps, Schmitt, Weir and their super power mates. I’ve stayed at Arthur Lydiard’s home on forty or fifty occasions. In that time I spent hours discussing training and sport. I just wish he was still alive to confirm my guarantee that the only thing he was interested in was being compared to the world’s best.

When Jane broke her first New Zealand Age Group record, the 100IM at a World Cup in Berlin, Arthur growled on the phone, “Don’t even submit the paperwork. Teach her that National Open records are the minimum standard.” I explained this to Jane and the forms were never submitted. New Zealand records are trumpeted as huge achievements these days. I guess that’s why Arthur was Arthur and this lot aren’t. Several weeks after Jane’s 100IM, a veteran Wellington administrator, Barbara Neish, thought we had overlooked the paperwork in error and submitted the forms on our behalf. Jane got her Age Group record but fortunately not before she had learned, it’s the big ones that matter.

Another very good swim in Irvine was Tash Hind’s 1.58.80 in the 200 freestyle final. Why on earth did team management report her effort as, “she was eighth in the final but third among Commonwealth countries” In reality she was seventh in the final and fourth among Commonwealth countries. Ahead of her were two Australians (Evans and Palmer) and a Canadian (Saumur). The claim of third in the Commonwealth is also misleading because it ignores the very good British swimmers who do not compete in the Pan Pacific Games. At least one of them (Carlin) has a time faster than 1.58.80. Is all this just more spin? Tash Hind’s swim was very good but it was not third in the Commonwealth and should not have been diminished by being reported as such.

Probably the most delightful item of reporting associated with New Zealand’s participation in this Pan Pacific Games was a profile on Scott Talbot-Cameron (that’s Cameron’s son and Pan Pac’s Assistant Coach) published in the New Zealand Herald just before the team left for the United States. In the report Scott tells us that his partner uses the wife of the New Zealand’s national rugby coach as her mentor to help her through the stress of living with a swimming coach. What on earth is all that about? It’s great PR spin but not much in the way of substance. The guy is a swimming coach, not a fighter pilot or brain surgeon. He works at a swimming pool, not in Tora Bora. Before I was a swim coach I was General Manager of a fair sized meat processing plant. Even that beats the life out of coaching for job stress. It all seems to be a case of ideas way above their station.
I was surprised to read that the New Zealand team of fourteen swimmers had a support crew of nine officials. Cameron was there plus four other coaches, a team manager, a sports scientist, a bio-mechanic and a massage therapist. What on earth did they all do? A bio-mechanic fiddling with swimmers strokes at this late stage may partially explain why we ended up with one rather lonely bronze medal. God knows how John Walker managed to run under 3.50 for a mile with only Arch Jelley’s telephone help from far off New Zealand. If the sport’s scientist and bio-mechanic were collecting stroke and time data from the meet, are all the Clubs in New Zealand going to have access to the data? We should – we paid for it. The appearance though is of an organization that does all the “trendy, flash” stuff but has no idea how to win a race. Certainly nine staff for a team of fourteen is way over the top.

Regular Swimwatch readers will know of our admiration of Melissa Ingram. Two years ago we watched her travel alone to World Cup meets in Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin. Not only did she win some mightily impressive swimming races she displayed the special character that is common in the world’s best swimmers. I’ve seen the American backstrokers Beisel and Pelton swim on a number of occasions. Neither could hold a candle to the Ingram I saw in Europe and yet both the Americans beat Ingram at the Pan Pacific Games. Why was that? I think she is over-prepared; she’s done too much speed training. Someone is making the same mistake I made preparing Toni Jeffs for the Barcelona Olympics. Ingram looks the same; too thin, too tired. The world’s best backstroker is not what she was two years ago, on her own in Europe. And that’s why we only won a solitary bronze medal.

Two notable events occurred this week. In Auckland our swim team is about to complete their spring aerobic build up. Yesterday’s main set was 10,000 meters swum either as 100×100 or as a 10 kilometer straight swim. Jessica, Abigail and Sarah completed the set. Sarah did it as 100×100. Jessica and Abigail did the straight swim. They were good efforts; Abigail because she’s only 14 and Jessica because she got through the swim in 2hrs 11min 48sec, an average of 1.19 for each 100. With Nikki having done 100×100 last build up we now have a core of four swimmers who can swim respectable distances during the aerobic period of their training. After fifteen weeks that’s progress.

On the other side of the Pacific the draft heat sheets for the 2010 Pan Pacific Championships were published. So who is going to win and lose? How is the New Zealand team going to fare? The table below shows our picks for the medalists in each event.

Our guess is that the USA will miss out in the men’s freestyle. We expect Cielo from Brazil, Park from Korea and Mellouli from Tunisia to dominate this stroke. Peirsol will come right, as he usually does, and take control of the men’s backstroke. Kitajima will shrug off a quiet patch of form and win the breaststroke sprints. The men’s fly and IMs will be a Phelps’ benefit. In the IMs Lochte will keep Phelps honest, but when the roll is called the Olympic Champion will be too good for the man from Florida. The women’s events will be more fragmented. The Americans will do well in freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke and the Australians will control the women’s butterfly and IM. We are picking the Americans to dominate both the men’s and women’s relays; but then it hardly took a genius to work that out.

The format of the meet favors smaller nations like New Zealand. Only two swimmers per country can swim in a final. The limited number of countries attending gives most countries a real shot at placing someone in the top eight. And, as they say, once you’re in the final anything can happen. In 1991 Toni Jeffs, Anna Simcic and Phillipa Langrell came home with Championship medals. Two years later John Steel, Trent Bray, Danyon Loader and the men’s relay were placed at the Kobe Games. Danyon Loader and the men’s relay teams won medals again in Atlanta in 1995. And finally Trent Bray and the relays won medals in the 1997 Pan Pacific Games in Fukuoka, Japan.

I was coaching Toni in 1991 when she won the Edmonton Pan Pacs bronze medal in the 50 freestyle. New Zealand track coach, Arch Jelley, helped me put together her final six weeks of training. It seemed to work. Toni was behind two good Americans, Jenny Thompson and Angel Martino in a time of 26.21 which, I think, was a New Zealand record.

We say Trent Bray’s 1997 bronze medal in the 200 freestyle was final because after 1997 New Zealand entered the “modern era” of performance pathways, state funding and imported foreign coaches and in the three Pan Pacific Games since then New Zealand has won nothing; not a medal of any description. Even with the advantage of only two swimmers from each nation in a final, at Sydney in 1999, Yokohama in 2002 and Victoria in 2006 the New Zealand’s National Coach hasn’t been able to coach a medalist of any sort. That’s thirteen years of funding and swimming talent for nothing. I see the coach’s son is now telling the country’s largest newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, that he wants to be the National Coach, coach an Olympic Champion and see swimming become New Zealand’s most successful sport. Time will tell but, if as we suspect, New Zealand does not win a race in Irvine, California there is a very long way to go. It’s difficult to climb Mt. Everest when the slope on Auckland’s Harbor Bridge is causing you problems. New Zealand is certainly starting well behind where it was in the early 1990s. We have centralized ourselves to death. Certainly the PR media access of the current North Shore regime is far in advance of their aquatic’s performance.

Let there be no mistake. The talent on this New Zealand team is huge. Bell, Palmer, Ingram, Burmester, and Snyders are potentially as good as any swimmers in the world. Culpability for the absence of a Pan Pac gold medal, if that is indeed what happens, will not lie at their door.

The United States National Swimming Championships have come and gone. Just like the New Zealand version they too have highlighted the good, the bad and the ugly.

Without question, the good was the general standard of swimming. Year after year the US produces a group of swimming super stars. Behind them, in every event there are a dozen others clamoring for their moment in the sun. This year was no exception. Phelps, Lochte, Soni, Volmer, Vanderkaay, Hoff, Coughlin, Beisel and Adrian came, saw, conquered and left. I was particularly pleased to see Lochte swimming so well. I once had a conversation with his father coach at a swim meet in Ft. Lauderdale. He described the huge mileages (90-100 kilometers a week) his son had swum as he worked his way to the top of American swimming. It’s always pleasing when that level of application is rewarded. Beating Phelps and winning the 200 IM in 1.54 was especially memorable. Phelps is the world’s best swimmer. To better him at anything, especially a National 200 IM, is huge. I would imagine Phelps is not best pleased and will be looking at the Pan Pac’s race as an opportunity to put the record straight. It would be wise not to bet against an angry Michael Phelps.

Other Americans who will win at the Pan Pacific Games include Soni in the breaststroke, Lochte in the 400 IM and Coughlin and Peirsol in the 100 backstroke. I was surprised at the versatility demonstrated by Peirsol at this meet. There was nothing unusual about his 53 second placing in the backstroke but his fourth place 52 in the butterfly was more than I expected. Although New Zealand’s National Coaches have told the world it is the Commonwealth Games that are the real 2010 test for New Zealand’s swimmers, it is actually this group of American athletes they should be after. This is where the 2012 Olympic Games are going to be won and lost. All the rest is just political flannel.

Two “old-timers” swam well at the US Nationals; Amanda Beard and Sabir Mohamad. Amanda Beard managed a really impressive 2.26 second place in the 200 breaststroke. She’s 28 years old and has been swimming fast breaststroke since she was 12. A few years ago I watched her compete in a World Cup series. She displayed that deep seated toughness that true champions usually bring to their trade. I imagine the National 200 result will see her on the team for next week’s Pan Pacific Games. What a fantastic story her swimming life has been. Sabir Mohamad is 34 and swam 23.20 in the 50 freestyle. His best event is actually the 50 fly. I remember him swimming in European World Cup events. He was an expert at sending Swedish female spectators wild by standing on the blocks before a race and rolling his mightily impressive abs. He clearly enjoyed the moment as much as they did.

The Swim MAC Club from North Carolina had an unusual disqualification affect one of their swimmers. The disqualification of Josh Schneider from the men’s 50 free and his reinstatement raised some interesting administration issues. Schneider was entered in the 100 fly but did not report for his heat and was disqualified from his next event, the 50 freestyle. According to Craig Lord, who I admit is not the World’s most reliable source; Schneider said “It’s something I’ve never trained for. I didn’t even look in the heat sheet for my name.” If that’s true, for a Club to enter a swimmer as good as Schneider in an event at the US Nationals and not tell him doesn’t demonstrate particularly good management. Swim MAC appealed the disqualification and could win on a technicality. It may be possible for the “no show” penalty to be dismissed at this meet since missing his swimsuit check before the 100 fly would have already resulted in Schneider being disqualified and therefore not required to report for the race..

A second MAC swimmer at these Nationals was coached by me for eighteen months. In that time he swam personal best times for the 50 and 100 freestyle of 23.38 and 50.95. In the year he’s swum at MAC his 50 has improved to 23.11 and the 100 hasn’t improved at all. His best 100 is now 1.1 seconds (2%) slower. Even the 50 is only 1.1% faster; well below the 3% annual improvement expected from potential international swimmers. I recall being told of the wonderful progress expected as a result of the change to Swim MAC. Whatever the reason, it hasn’t worked.

One other swimmer at these Nationals was coached by me about four years ago. She ended up swimming 8.49 in the 800 at this year’s Championship. That’s a good time and was worth a mid-20s place. It is still most of the pool behind Chloe Sutton who won the 800 in 8.24. But, the ex-Florida swimmer may have been faster without the influence of a mother who was responsible for an anonymous poison letter sent to one of our swim team’s sponsors and other disruptive behavior. You may recall her antics were the subject of a post on Swimwatch, written about six months. That can’t be good for anyone’s swimming career. There are some strange folk in the swimming world.

And so the National week is over. The Championships are great entertainment and serve as a valuable teaching tool in a country as far away as New Zealand. The reality of how well the world’s best swimmers do their job is a good lesson for us all.

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.

The Auckland Winter Championships have come and gone. West Auckland Aquatics have doing alright; seventy four personal best swims out of one hundred and twelve starts. That’s a PB ration of 66%; not bad, but not brilliant either. After experiencing a major coaching change, it’s probably good enough to satisfy the criteria of seeing the team make some progress. And we did qualify nine swimmers for the Age Group Nationals in Christchurch later in the year. Only three so far have qualified for the Open Nationals in the holiday town of Mt. Manganui on the 12 November. They are three good swimmers and should do well in the Nationals. Their task hasn’t been made easy though by a stunning bit of programming.

New Zealand has national examinations called NCEAs that are taken by students in their third, fourth and fifth years in High School. It seems that Swimming New Zealand have programmed the Spring National Championships from the 12-14 November. The NCEA exams begin nationwide one day later on the 15 November. Not much in the way of pathway planning there. I wonder how much thought went into arriving at the worst possible conflict with every New Zealand High School student’s academic and swimming progress.

As is normal all over the world on occasions such as the Auckland Winter Championships you encounter the good, the bad and the ugly. For example, I was surprised at the number of people who swam in the preliminaries and qualified for an “A” or “B” final and decided to scratch. From thirty four events forty seven swimmers decided the heat swim was enough for them. One of the forty seven was from West Auckland Aquatics. I’m not sure what the international norm is in this case but an average of almost 1.5 swimmers scratching from each final does seem high. It suggests that too many good swimmers are treating their regional Championships as a morning training opportunity. That would not be right.

Our team was appointed to sit next to the United Swim Team coached by Jonathan Winter. I’d like to know who decides the allocation of the seating these days. When I left New Zealand West Auckland Aquatics always sat down the other end of the pool. North Shore still sits where they always have. Why don’t we? Anyway, the good part about being shifted was we were next to the United Swim Team. All weekend I was entertained by Jonathan Winter, recounting stories about what he a Mark Haumona got up to in the “old days”. For those of you who don’t know who Mark Haumona was; he swam butterfly for New Zealand and was noted as a hard case. I’m told he is a teacher these days. He’d be very good at that – the poacher turned gamekeeper. No wonder Jonathan Winter is one of New Zealand’s best coaches. His easy manner and calm disposition are in the best traditions of New Zealand’s finest coaches. Lydiard, Jelley and Laing had the same quality. Swimmers perform at their best for a coach like that. Referring to a point made on Swimwatch several articles ago; I have no idea why we import foreign coaches when New Zealand has the likes of Winter around. Hopefully one day soon that will change.

Yes, it was a fun weekend; well run and, unlike some Florida meets, spread across relatively short sessions. My daughter Jane followed our team’s results on the internet. She sent me an email towards the end of the weekend. All it said was, “Somewhere Ross is pleased.” The Ross she referred to is Ross Anderson, close personal friend and coach of West Auckland Aquatics through many of its most successful years. He was New Zealand Coach of the Year in 1987 and Head Coach at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. For three consecutive years from 1992 to 1994 the Ross Anderson led West Auckland Aquatics team won the Cain Trophy awarded to New Zealand’s top club. Ross resigned from the Club in March 1997 and died a couple of months later. But, to my mind, Ross Anderson is still part of this team. He set the standard by which our work and today’s West Auckland Aquatics club should be judged. If, as Jane says, “Somewhere Ross is pleased” then we have done well.

Last week’s Swimwatch story has prompted some interesting correspondence. You may recall the story was about the Auckland Winter Championships. In it we mentioned some of the characters that have swum for the West Auckland Aquatics swim team in the past. Regular readers may also remember that several weeks ago we published an article about one of New Zealand’s master track coaches, Arch Jelley. The two stories were unusually linked by the arrival of this photograph in our email mailbox.

There may be more to this photograph than I know. However, even the bits that I do know make it a genuine piece of New Zealand sporting history. As you can see the picture was taken in 1980 and shows the Sunnybrae Normal Primary School’s Auckland championship swim team. You would be excused for thinking there was nothing too remarkable about that. However, at least three members of the team make the photograph unusual.

First there is John Steel. He’s the blonde haired guy on the far left of the back row. For years John swam for the West Auckland Aquatics team and was New Zealand’s best 100 and 200 freestyler. John competed for New Zealand in two Olympic Games; Barcelona and Atlanta. He won a bronze medal in the 4×200 Freestyle Relay at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, New Zealand and four years later won two silver medals (4×100m Freestyle and 4×200m Freestyle Relays) at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada. He was pretty well known in the United States as well. He spent four years swimming for USC and in his senior year was Captain of their men’s swim team. His coach at USC was Mark Schubert who also coached Rhi Jeffrey, John Foster and Joseph Skuba before they swam with me in Florida. The swimming world is a small place sometimes. John Steel now works for Air New Zealand as a flight attendant.

Fifth from the left in the middle row is Nick Sanders. He also rose to swimming fame as a member of the West Auckland Aquatics team. He swam the 50 and 100 Freestyle and 100 Butterfly for New Zealand in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. His fastest 50 Freestyle time of 23.32 was set in Rome in 1990. The time stood as New Zealand’s fastest 50 for thirteen years until 2003 when fellow West Auckland Aquatics team member Brad Herring lowered it to 23.27. Last year the New Zealand Olympic Association set out to track down the 1111 athletes that have represented New Zealand in Olympic competition. They accounted for all but nine. One of the “lost” nine was Nick Sanders.

And the Coach of all this talent? None other than Arch Jelley. He’s on the far right of the photograph, without a swimsuit. At the time he was Principal of Sunnybrae Normal Primary School. I have always been quite proud to have coached both international runners and swimmers. Arch has me well beaten. Nick Sanders, John Steel and John Walker, there is no trumping that. Perhaps the best part of this story though is that shortly after this photograph was taken Arch Jelley appointed another teacher, Sheridan Fish, as the swim team’s Assistant Coach. It didn’t take long for the swim team to be known as the Sunnybrae “Jelleyfish”.

Sunnybrae, West Auckland Aquatics, John Steel, Nick Sanders and Ross Anderson; it was all there long before the days of SPARC, Millennium Institutes, carding and pathways. But the Jelleyfish that ended up at West Auckland Aquatics did all right I think. And that’s a tradition well worth preserving for swimmers in west Auckland today.

Next week we’re off to the Auckland Winter Championships. Actually we’re not “off” to them at all. Being as we operate out of the Henderson Pool, the Auckland Winter Championships are coming to us. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve always enjoyed the meet, right back to when I swam in it in the late 1960s. The meet wasn’t held in the Henderson Pool back then. Henderson only became its home in the early 1990s.

Two of our swimmers, Nikki and Jessica

In 1969 I won the senior men’s 100 breaststroke title. New Zealand’s star breaststroker at the time was Joco Ruzio-Saban. He was from Auckland but fortunately for me he didn’t enter the Championships in 1969. Coming from rural Gisborne winning the Auckland Championships was a very big deal; or at least the local Gisborne Herald said it was. The time was painfully slow. Many years later when Jane won the women’s version of the same race she was about eight seconds ahead of her struggling parent. Mind you she did not have to deal with some of the ancient rules that made breaststroke harder to swim in the old days. I taught our Bronze Squad (that’s the young swimmers) 1969 breaststroke at practice today. They seemed to enjoy swimming along, with the old wide kick and head stuck up out of the water breaststroke that we used to swim. I heard Xavier tell his mates that this was the way the “old ladies” in the aqua-jogging lane swam breaststroke.

When Toni Jeffs came to Wellington to train the first “away” meet we took her to was the Auckland Winter Championships. On the flight to Auckland Toni, Gary Hurring and I were upgraded to First Class. Gary and I were sitting towards the back of the First Class section. Toni was near the front sitting next to Roger Douglas who, at the time, was the Government’s Minister of Finance. I leaned over and said to Gary in what I thought was a soft stage whisper, “Who’s that gray haired old bugger sitting next to Toni Jeffs from Wellington, New Zealand?” It can’t have been soft enough. Roger Douglas turned around, gave a small wave and a smile and said, “It’s Roger Douglas from Auckland, New Zealand.”

Several years later when all the controversy about Toni being sponsored by Tiffany’s Night Club was swirling around, Television New Zealand would call me in Wellington to see if our team was swimming in the Auckland Winter Championships. If we were entered a news crew would be sent out to Henderson to record the event. I’m afraid we don’t merit that attention these days; not yet anyway. Come to think of it no one does.

Back in those days our team always sat with Coach Ross Anderson and his West Auckland Aquatics swim team. Little wonder he was New Zealand’s best coach. He was a man who saw the big picture better than most. No matter what the controversy or gossip when we walked in the door of the Henderson Pool there was always a cheery wave and a, “Come and sit with us, David.” He had a great team too; John Steel, Johnny Munro, Ross Anderson Junior, Paul Kent, Nick Sanders, Craig Ford and Georgina Hall. Now there’s a list of characters. The place and the meet will not be quite the same without Ross Anderson. I just hope we can do a good job with the team that I still think of as being partly his.

Jane qualified for her first New Zealand Open Nationals swimming at the Auckland Winter Championships. She was eleven and won the 50 breaststroke in a time that was a hundredth of a second under the qualifying time. She was naturally pleased and came up to her father and coach and breathlessly exclaimed, “I did it.” I had no idea what she was talking about and asked, “You did what?” There is a moral in that. Too many swimmers are under too much pressure from coach and parent to qualify for this or swim fast in that. Swimmers generate their own pressure. There is little need for us to add to it. Lydiard used to say, “If it doesn’t happen naturally it won’t happen at all.” It’s good advice.

We’ve got twenty one swimmers entered in the 2010 version of the Auckland Winter Championships. It will be interesting to see how they go. They are a good group of swimmers who have worked well to understand their new coach and his strange training ideas. Since I arrived back from the United States there has only been time to do eight weeks of build up conditioning, one week of anaerobic swimming and three weeks of trials and coordination training. But, the Auckland Winter Championships have been good to us in the past. Let’s just hope that run continues. Two of the team’s seniors, i and Jessica are in this photograph. They are both great fun to have around; Jessica contentious and reserved, Nikki, larger than life, a New Zealand version of Rhi Jeffrey. With them and Zane, Justin, Kirsty, Anaru, Amelia, Jane, Sarah, Sophie and eleven others it should be a fun weekend. We will let you know.

“We need three more timekeepers before we can start the meet.” In the world of competitive swimming you hear that announcement all the time. Without a huge army of volunteers the sport would quickly grind to a halt. I’ve become more aware of the role volunteers play since returning to New Zealand. In my Florida team paid staff performed many of the tasks volunteers handle in New Zealand. Invoicing training fees and preparing meet entries are two time consuming examples. I hate to think what Florida’s County bureaucrats would have made of a parent preparing the monthly pool invoice or collecting training fees. The beginnings of a Bernie Madoff incident would have been suspected and a dawn raid planned to deal with the scam. Don’t laugh, they thought dawn raids were entirely rational behavior. America sends the world a message of slick efficiency but some of the worst bureaucratic jungles exist in that country and it’s getting worse.

That’s not to say US Swimming doesn’t benefit from the work of thousands of volunteers. In 2009 there were 29,557 non athlete members registered to US Swimming. Of these 2,129 were full time coaches; Florida had 140. That still leaves 28,000 other non athlete members helping run the sport in the United States. In addition there are thousands of others who work at meets but are not registered with the national association. Some of them are real hard workers. I knew a lady in Florida who was the mother of a Florida State High School 100 freestyle champion. She was an amazing worker. She updated the team’s notice board, ran the hospitality service for each swim meet, recruited the officials necessary to run local meets, organized the team Christmas party and spent hours standing on the pool deck, in the Florida sun, inspecting starts and turns. Best of all she did it in a good spirit; happy to be part of things working well. Another exceptional volunteer in America was an attorney who was on the Club’s Board. I would think he provided the team and me with about an average of two hours of his time every week for five years. The normal charge out rate for a senior attorney in the United States is $350 an hour. In five years that’s $182,000 of free advice. He insisted on paying his full swimming training fees as well. Yes, there are some very good people out there.

Good volunteers in New Zealand are no different. We have four grafters I must tell you about. First of all there is the team handicapper. “What on earth is that?” I hear every United States reader ask. Well, in New Zealand, the person who processes the team’s racing results and meet entries is called a Handicapper. I suspect the origin of the name dates back to when many swimming races in New Zealand were handicapped with some swimmers starting at go while the faster swimmers waited for a predetermined delay before they could swim. The delays were calculated by the team’s Handicapper – hence the name. Handicap races don’t exist any longer but the name lives on. Our team handicapper has been doing the job for the Club since forever and she’s very good at it. And it’s not an easy job. Somebody is always late with their entry; someone else wants to change the 400 IM to the 50 Free one day after the entry’s closing date. It’s a nightmare. Since I’ve been back in New Zealand the team has entered six meets. Two days before each meet I’ve been presented with a printout of the entries – no stress, no drama, just a real good volunteer.

The second of our team’s four grafters looks after the team’s correspondence, updates the notice board and distributes information to members via email. It is all important and all done well. The one I like best though is the Notice Board. There’s nothing worse than having an out-of-date Notice Board. No one is interested in reading the training timetable changes from 2008. Worse are those faded newspaper cuttings and team lists so old that the paper is cracked and curled. It makes the Club look bad. If the Notice Board is a shambles what else isn’t being done right. Well we don’t have that problem. From a coach’s point of view, our Notice Boards are so good I don’t bother remembering half the things I should anymore. Someone asks me something I just point to the Notice Board; it’s all there.

The last two grafters come as a pair. They do the office stuff; invoice the team’s training fees, prepare monthly and annual accounts, apply for grants, pay invoices and pay the coach’s wages: best to keep in good with them. If it’s the team’s money, they’ve got it counted. They work early every morning while the team is at practice. In spite of the hour they seem happy enough. I occasionally call in to make a cup of coffee and it’s like a good British comedy in there; stories, laughs and good hearted banter. I won’t be able to tell this story nearly as well as it was told to me but two days ago one of the grafters had a disaster at home; her washing machine broke down. The wretched thing wouldn’t drain properly. In fact it had been getting worse for a couple of months. Finally a plumber was called. He searched and searched and finally he found a pair of our grafter’s panties – in New Zealand they are called knickers – stuck in the drainage pipe. “I was so embarrassed.” she said, “I wondered where they’d gone.”

So there you have it, good volunteers not only keep the place going they provide entertainment as well.