Many Swimwatch stories discuss matters that concern elite swimming. We have written about swim suits, international championships, Mare Nostrum swim meets and national coaches. My favorite coaching is working with swimmers like Rhi Jeffrey, Oswaldo Quevedo, Jane Copland, Toni Jeffs, John Foster and Nichola Chellingworth. The revelation that, even these World class competitors were all once in someone’s Confident Beginners class, will surprise no one. In recognition of that fact, every day, I make a point of taking our juniors for the stroke correction portion of their practice.

For several reasons, it is well worth the twenty minutes. You become a better coach. A teacher once told me that elementary school teachers are better at teaching than university tutors. Teaching junior students requires more skill. At this level the task is not only to transfer information, but to transfer information in a manner that instills learning skills at the same time. That’s true for swimming too. Taking junior swimmers requires better explanations. For Rhi, “Catch a bit deeper,” is sufficient. She knows what it means and how to follow the instruction. She is also physically able to do it and even understands why it is important – and all without a long explanation from me. For juniors, good teaching requires that all that information is explained. Which means the coach has to know and think through the how and the why as well. And therein lies an exercise that is good for the coaching soul. I think I’ve answered more interesting whys and hows from juniors than from all the Rhis of the world.

Besides making the coach explain stroke techniques better, teaching young swimmers is a constant reminder of the breadth of the swimming curriculum. When all you do is coach Jane Copland type swimmers, it’s very easy to forget how much needs to be learned. I was at a swim meet with our junior swimmers this weekend. One of our eight year olds was not only swimming in his first backstroke race but ended up winning it as well. Before the race I was helping him find his lane and prepare for the right race. Americans do not bother with all that marshalling stuff so popular in the rest of the world. At big meets here you’d never get through them if you tried to carefully marshal all the swimmers. As we stood waiting for the start the eight year old asked, “How soon after I dive in do I roll over and start swimming backstroke?” Before you think that we must have omitted to cover backstroke starts, I should explain that backstroke starts had been taught on several occasions. This particular eight year old had however assumed that our in-the-water tuition had been to avoid getting out of the pool during what has been a cold Florida winter. Moments like that make you realize how much detail needs to be taught. And even then I bet there are a thousand small things you will miss. There is nothing like a few disqualifications to make you realize just how much has been missed.

The photograph below was taken at the same swim meet and is a classic illustration of this point.

It shows the start of the 10 and under boys 50 freestyle. Three of the boys in the photograph are members of our team. For one of them it was his first race, for another his second and for the third his fifth or sixth event. I’m very loyal to all the members of our team. However in this case I have to acknowledge we are still a little short of Phelps’ type starts. The really good thing about all this though is that progress is so obvious and exciting. From the uncontrolled tumbles shown in this photograph to well honed dives is not a long process and happens soon enough. We hope the three boys involved keep this picture as a reminder of how far they have progressed. We hope you enjoy the photograph and thank one of our mothers, Lori, for the skill and luck she had in capturing the moment.

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.

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.

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.”

Occasionally Swimwatch receive suggestions on the content of its articles. Recently a good friend suggested Swimwatch should highlight the perilous state of New Zealand’s country schools. The suggestion had merit. Rural schools all over New Zealand are being closed. Not so very long ago the children of farming families could ride a horse or walk to their local rural school. Now they spend an hour or more in dusty school buses travelling to schools in regional towns. I went to one of the rural schools. It had three rooms, three teachers, a dental clinic, a shower block, an orchard, a vegetable garden, a tennis court and a rugby field. The education must have been fine. Three of my Te Reinga School mates ended up graduating from University with me. Fortunately Te Reinga is one of the surviving rural schools. Only two of the class rooms are in current use, but a filtered pool has replaced the Hangiroa River as the location of the school’s swim lessons. I decided the continuing health of my old school meant it was best to avoid using Swimwatch to discuss the plight of other, less fortunate, schools.

A second email this week suggested Swimwatch should tell the story of Bethany Hamilton. Now that’s a story well worth telling. She’s a Hawaiian born surfer who ran afoul of a 14 foot tiger shark while surfing at Tunnels Beach, Kauai. The shark took off her arm. Bethany recovered and is back surfing and winning some pretty big competitions. I recommend having a look at the u-tube clips of her performances. She’s bloody amazing. She says holding her balance with one arm is not a problem. It did take her two or three shots to get the hang of standing up again. The surfing world has taken her to its heart. You can tell that by the way their magazines refer to her as “the one arm surfer chick” or the “blond and tanned hottie, decked out in a yellow bikini and toting her surfboard”. On the world’s beaches such sexist praise is reserved for only the most respected subjects. Next time you don’t feel like going to your local heated pool for practice because you’ve got a cold or hurt a bit from weights, spare a thought for Bethany and get yourself down to the pool.

And so, instead of a social commentary on New Zealand’s education woes or a story of huge personal courage, I have chosen to discuss the ultimate rich man’s self-indulgence; America’s Cup yachting. The most recent 2010 challenge is even more egotistical than normal. Instead of the customary round of Louis Vuitton races to find a finalist to sail against Alinghi, this year it’s just Team USA and Alinghi playing with each other. Instead of the traditional 12 meter single hull race boats, this year the competition is between two space age multi-hull behemoths. Each boat is 90 feet long and 90 feet wide. Their masts rise 180 feet above the deck. That’s about 50 feet higher than the tallest mast on the 920 ton Cutty Sark. Instead of a best of five final, this year it’s the best of three.

Some things have stayed the same; some things about the America’s Cup never change. The competitors appear to be incapable of agreeing on anything important about their event. As usual the New York Supreme Court has had to decide on the rules and dates of the 2010 competition. Team USA’s fixed wing sail still hasn’t been approved and will clearly be the subject of litigation long after this year’s three races have been sailed. Of great pride to the small nation I call home is the number of New Zealanders in the two teams. Both team captains, Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, are New Zealanders. I met Coutts at a New Zealand Sportsman of the Year dinner a few years ago. He seemed extraordinarily quiet. Mind you he didn’t need to say much. His sporting feats say it all really; Olympic Champion, America’s Cup Champion, World Champion and Admirals Cup Champion. In the world of sailing there is not much left for Russell Coutts to win.

Alinghi has five other sailors from New Zealand in their crew. Team USA has nine New Zealanders working to get the Cup back to America. They’re all tough buggers. Men like Dean Phipps, Andrew Taylor, Ross Halcrow and Murray Jones have been winning America’s Cup races for the last fifteen years. I’d trust them anywhere. They are proud athletes, caste in the mold of Hillary, Walker, Meads and Sutcliff. You want someone to win a race for you? These guys know how to do that. The whole event is close to being a race to decide whether my team of New Zealanders can beat your team of New Zealanders.

All this begins with the first match on 8 February 2010. Historically the 8 February has already seen some fine aquatic moments. In 1983 Eric Peters set a sailboat record of 46 days for crossing the Atlantic and in 1985 Michael Gross swam a world record of 7:38.75 for the 800 meters. Wherever New Zealanders are competing on that day; whatever event is involved, Swimwatch wish them well. A just and fair conclusion: one that avoids a trip to the State Supreme Court in search of justice.

Snap is not a particularly impressive word. It’s too short and clipped to mean anything important. Words like parliament, serendipity and monarchy are impressive words. That’s why the Queen is a monarch and not a snap. For me however snap is personally significant. Its meaning was reconfirmed this week when I noticed an interesting article on a New Zealand news website (infonews.co.nz) describing what it called “possibly the biggest art event ever to be held in Italy”. It interested me because the event was being held in Cassino, Italy on May 15-29 to commemorate New Zealand’s involvement in the Battle of Monte Cassino 66 years ago.

It went on to say that “Kiwi artists who have a connection with soldiers who fought in Cassino will be first invited to take part. The dates mark the liberation of towns in the area during World War 2 and are Cassino’s “busy time” of the year with veterans groups, commemoration services and unveiling of new memorials.”

It would be stretching the truth to say I was a “Kiwi artist”. The truth is I was excused art at Wairoa High School in favor of going to the gym to do weights. I thought my pictures of a dagger with a snake twisted around the blade were not too bad. I drew pretty good trees as well. I don’t know how many trees they’ve got at Monte Cassino but I’m sure I could do a fair job of putting their image on paper. Probably not good enough to merit an invitation to the Monte Cassino art show though. However if my pictorial skills aren’t up to standard; does writing count as art? I’m not the best writer in the world. There are dozens of writers that drive me mad with their easy word skills. Roger Robinson’s writing is a rare example of classic prose. Jane is better than average too. Most Swimwatch readers will have picked that up already. Quite often I try and copy her sentence construction, grammar and vocabulary skills. Roger and Jane would certainly count as “artists”. But, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume I’d make an invitation to the final, albeit in lane eight.

You will notice that the other criterion to join the exhibition is to “have a connection with soldiers who fought in Cassino”. Here, I am on firm ground. My Dad was at Monte Cassino in a tank. Actually he wasn’t in a tank for very long. A German shell shot up his vehicle shortly after he arrived there. In a book called “Albanete – lost opportunity at Cassino” my Dad describes his exit from the war.

“It was while looking at the possible route that we were hit. Regaining consciousness I saw that my arm was bleeding heavily and must have a tourniquet quickly. I looked up to see Joe Costello gazing through the turret at me. How he wasn’t hit is a mystery. Steve was slumped over his 75mm, bleeding badly from his back and head. Tom Middleton was lying on the floor, having fallen off his seat by the wireless. With difficulty I managed to traverse the turret by hand to enable Jack to scramble through to apply the tourniquet.

This applied I told Jack to try the motors. It was with a prayer on our lips he pressed the starter. The left engine roared into life to be followed by the right immediately afterwards. With his head out of the driver’s hatch, the better to see and get maximum speed Jack drove out through our own tanks, which were still pounding away at the enemy, to the forward Casualty Station.”

Repairing the damage cost my father his right arm and eye.

Forty five years later a lot had happened. My parents had married in a pretty elaborate ceremony in New Zealand’s First Church. I was born and my parents had divorced. My mother remarried and I lost contact with my father. He did pay for me to spend my senior year at high school in Thorp, Wisconsin and to attend New Zealand’s Outward Bound School. When Jane was twelve our swim team decided to have a summer training camp in Blenheim. My father lived there; it was time to re-establish contact. It was time for him to meet his granddaughter.

Just before we left for the camp I had an accident with a knife and cut two of the fingers on my right hand. It wasn’t all that bad but did merit eight or nine stitches and an impressively large bandage. Two days later we arrived in Blenheim. A barbeque had been arranged at my Dad’s home with his second wife, my half brother and sister and their families, all of whom I had never met. Jane seemed fine but I was pretty nervous as I walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

My Dad opened the door and paused for a moment studying the oversized bandage on my right hand. Ever so slowly he extended his only arm, his left arm to my left arm, gripped it firmly and said, “Snap”.

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with “Google Analytics”, its near cousin “StatCounter”, or any other web stats / analytics package. I’d never heard of them until Jane visited Florida in September. However the void in my computer knowledge was not particularly surprising. A few years ago when we were setting up Swimwatch, Edward Yardley, the technical brains behind the venture, nearly wet his new corduroys when I called Google “Goggle”. For a swim coach I thought it was a perfectly understandable mistake. With his degree in computer science, Edward thought I’d helped Noah build the ark.

These statistics and analytics programmes tell you all about the visits to your website each day – how many, where from, how often and what they put into their computer to end up at Swimwatch. I have say, it is bloody amazing what some people ask Google to find. I mean most visitors are sensible and stick to “Swimwatch” or “swimming news”. You probably don’t know that Swimwatch ranks on page one of Google for “swimming news”. How’s that for SEO status, right up there with the BBC, ESPN and the New York Times. And if you don’t know what SEO means, you were probably helping Noah as well.

However there are some strange buggers out there who Google all sorts of stuff. Someone wanting “Ian Thorpe naked” arrived at Swimwatch the other day. They weren’t looking for our story on Thorpe’s swimming feats. Instead they were after a site that boasted a picture of Thorpe’s head on the unclothed torso of Mr. Puny America.

It is a mystery what anyone finds on Swimwatch to justify looking for “sexy swimmers team girls pictures” or “uploaded images female swimmer” or “the seven hottest female swimmers of all time“ or even “naughty Indiana girl pictures”. Those four occur quite often from all over the world. The four most recent inquiries using those referrals came from the United States, or to be more precise Cambridge, Massachusetts, Westport, Indiana, Union, New Jersey and San Diego, California. Our reader in San Diego must have found what he was after. He spent a constructive 21min and 49sec reading two of Jane’s posts. Sadly he appears to have had little interest in my literary efforts. I do not want to give the impression that the United States has a monopoly on strange Swimwatch searches. Just today someone from Lane Cove in New South Wales, Australia felt the need to find out about “swimmer red Speedo hard photo”. I doubt there is anything on Swimwatch that would satisfy this Australian fantasy.

Some of our swimmers get more than their fair share of attention. Rhi Jeffrey and Jane Copland are the most popular. Both have personalities well suited to managing their internet attention. In fact their popularity on a swimming website, well after both of them have retired, speaks volumes for their larger than life personalities. While searches for Rhi and Jane may be understandable and even normal, there are some strange ones as well. For about a week recently our best female swimmer was Googled every day by someone in Maryland. The swimmer has never been to Maryland, doesn’t know anyone in Maryland, but clearly has a determined admirer up there somewhere.

There is one interesting national characteristic. Google searches for “coach yelling at athlete” almost always come from the United Kingdom. There is obviously a whole lot more distress about this subject in the UK than anywhere else. The Brits clearly have a thing about being yelled at by swimming coaches. Americans, who revere their swim coaches, initiate very few searches on the subject. It seems that the most concern in the UK is centered in the south. For example, today’s inquiries came from Bristol, Coulsdon in Surrey and Martock in Somerset. Parents and swimmers north of Manchester and in Scotland are not nearly as concerned about a few poolside verbals.

I was delighted to see that a Google inquiry for “Ohura Beacon Wanganui New Zealand” was directed straight to Swimwatch. The Ohura Beacon is a flight navigation beacon on the west of New Zealand’s North Island. It played an important part in my life. Twenty six years ago, at 9000 feet almost directly above the beacon the engine of my Piper Arrow burst an oil pipe and stopped. A little south of Ohura I found a friendly paddock and managed one of my better landings. I wrote about the incident in a Swimwatch story. It looks like Google enjoyed the story and are now directing all aviation inquires about the beacon to our blog. I wonder how many Air New Zealand captains have discovered an Arrow’s forced landing instead of the technical details of the Ohura Beacon.

Other fun searches that have ended up at Swimwatch include “empty pool” from someone who lives in Gin Gin, Queensland, Australia: a strange request from a strange town. A search from New Delhi, India asked “is it possible to swim in New Zealand in May?” Someone from San Jose, California wanted the opinion of Swimwatch on “cotton chicken candy nuggets”. None of these are as odd as the reader in Valdosta, Georgia in the United States who wanted our opinion on the “monte food mart in Wellington New Zealand”. It would not be fair for us to comment. We left New Zealand before Del Monte arrived. I have relations however who tell me the stores aren’t too bad: where I come from that’s pretty high praise.

It is off the subject but you may be interested to know that in the past four days Swimwatch has received 500 visits from 40 different countries. That number, spread around the world is bound to result in readers with all sorts of emotions and motives. I even heard of a reader last week who said we had insulted some of her friends. Of Course that’s not true: just Google it – “insulted my friends” – see, I told you, no mention of Swimwatch.

During the Christmas break, Jane came to Florida. We played a number of the games families do at this time of the year. I enjoy the Internet’s trivia quizzes. Some of the questions are great. For example, who thought up these two: Who hasn’t been Prime Minister of New Zealand and where is Stewart Island? It’s all in the intonation. Who hasn’t been the Prime Minister of New Zealand?

Last night we were asked to name four of the seven deadly sins. I never get them all but apparently they are, wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. It got me thinking about which sin was most common and most damaging to a swimmer’s career. Why did talented athletes capable of university full ride scholarships not get them? Why did others capable of swimming for their country never make it? Why do 90% of Florida’s young swimmers drop out before realizing their potential? Is there one sin that explains the vast amount of underachievement that goes on in this sport? I think its greed.

Lydiard would agree. He constantly stressed the long term nature of an athlete’s career. Four years of full international training, he said, was the minimum apprenticeship for a top international competitor. And yet there are hundreds of athletes and thousands of parents and a few score of coaches who want results faster than that. In the United States, it’s especially bad. Around every corner there’s a McDonalds drive-through swim team. In my first three years here I was constantly being sent emails telling me I couldn’t coach a fast swimmer. The emails have dried up a bit since our team qualified six swimmers for the US National Championships, broke two Master’s World Records, won the Ft. Lauderdale International 4×50 relay and had swimmers win the open men’s freestyle and fly events at the same meet.

In spite of that I still see examples of the sin of greed. As Lydiard put it once, “In six months they will know they were right. In six years though, they will know their mistake. And then it’s too late.”

Let me give you a few examples.

I coached an extraordinarily gifted swimmer for two years. At twelve she would hang on a bar outside my office doing repeat sets of ten pull-ups. Concerned that she might be overdoing things I finally asked her to ease off to no more than 50 pull-ups before practice. After eighteen months swimming, at 14, she was easily cruising through occasional weeks of 100 kilometer and had swum 1.02 for 100 LCM freestyle. Just after she qualified for and swam in the finals of the Caribbean Islands Championships her parents told me they were being pressured by parents from the “private school” swim team down the road. She’s swimming too far, they said. She doesn’t race enough events, her strokes all funny, her growth will be affected and she’s got no social life. Finally an email arrived. Dear Mr. Wright, it said, “Our daughter must not swim as far in training. She must race more often and she must do more stroke correction in everything except freestyle.” It was the classic over anxious parent email; Alison refers to it as our “get out of jail card”. Two months later we left what the locals call “paradise”, knowing that this extraordinary girl’s career was a lost cause. That was four years ago. Today she still swims around 1.01/1.02 for 100 freestyle, she’s doing well in school and in every way is a well rounded, good person. But she’s not competing in the finals of the US National Championships or Olympic Trials and that’s where her talent lay until her parents lost or perhaps never knew the meaning of a sound swimming education.

In New Zealand I was fortunate to coach another extraordinary talent. She swam in the finals of the Commonwealth Games, qualified for the Olympic Games, won medals in the Oceania Games, Pan Pacific Games and World Cup Finals. Although she preferred the 50 freestyle, her father said her real talent lay in the 200. I agreed and gradually geared her training toward the 200 event with the firm goal of securing that gold medal in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Then she met a friend/partner who convinced her that more immediate rewards could be found in her favorite 50 meter event – and so they could. She began coaching herself and successfully went on to win further New Zealand Championships, break World Master’s Records and win two bronze medals in the Commonwealth Games 50 meters freestyle. In Sydney however Susan O’Neil won the 200 freestyle final in 1.58.24. Without question New Zealand could have won that race. One hundred meters in 57 followed by a minute was well within her capability. It’s about patience. Gold can be lost for the lack of it.

Recently I coached another talented young freestyler; perhaps not quite as gifted as the swimmers already mentioned in this article. However, what she missed in talent she more than made up for in work ethic. She swam further and harder than anybody I’ve coached at her age. I forever had to tell her, “That’s enough for today. You hop out now.” Given time her ability to work would have yielded plenty. My guess is that in four years she had the potential to be around – that’s above or below – 4 minutes for 400 and 8 minutes for 800 meters freestyle. Unfortunately, she had, and my guess is still has, a classic “over anxious parent” mother who has no idea how to handle winning and losing an athletic event. Kipling’s idea of meeting, with “triumph and disaster and treating those two impostors just the same” is a totally foreign concept. I’ve seen her walk out of events when her daughter didn’t perform as well as the mother thought she should. I’ve heard the girl accused of being gutless and not trying. I once heard the mother ask the girl when she was going to stop being mediocre and I was told that the girl had to swim faster to avoid the mother’s Boca Raton friends laughing at her. Wow, in that environment success is doomed to “blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.” (For New Zealand readers; Boca Raton is the Remuera of South Florida)

Relevant to all these examples is potential. Clearly if a swimmers has the potential to swim 1.10 for 100 freestyle and does it, that is a major achievement; equal to the feats of a Phelps and Torres. But if you are a female capable of 8.10 for 800 meters freestyle and your best is say 8.52, then something has gone wrong. I am not impressed; 67 meters behind where you should be swimming by now is not good. Give me the 1.10 any time.

In a couple of years or so we will know whether the decisions made this year have worked or not. Lydiard was right, “In six months of course they are all right. In four years, I’m not so sure.”

I pose a question to you, dear Internet. How stupid would you have to be to write a hand-written anonymous letter to a party to whom you’d already sent hand-written mail?

I’m going with “fairly dense”. Here are two images of a letter received today by one of our swim team’s sponsors, Oyer, Macoviak and Associates, with whom East Coast Swimming has a referral programme. The letter is a print-out of Swimwatch’s last entry. The entire entry was printed out and included in the envelope; here, I’ve replicated only the pages which were written on. Note, the “sender’s address” is that of a public swimming pool and is, of course, fake. The pool had nothing to do with the note.

We immediately had our suspicions as to who was responsible for the note, and luckily, we had an older correspondence from the person with which we could cross-check the penmanship. When placing certain letters next to each other, it became even more apparent that our guess was correct. Forgive the photographed images of the older letter: someone else scanned today’s letter, and our scanner is broken.

I’m not a handwriting analysis expert, but I’m also not legally blind.

First, let’s look at “A”.

There are three tell-tale signs here. The straight line, extending slightly above the curve of the letter to the left is one; however, far more telling are the small flick backwards at the end of the stroke downwards, and the extended cross-stroke.

Let’s now look at an instance of a double “e”.

Again, a distinctive flick to the left, along with an identical overall shape, most certainly suggest that these were written by the same person.

On to the capital “D”.

Because I don’t doubt the eyesight of any of you, it’s unlikely I need to point out the similarities between these characters. However, it’s worth mentioning the defining point about each D: the bottom-heavy nature of the characters appears somewhat like the letter was filled with something–bullshit comes to mind–which was then left to settle.

There were two varieties of “r” in both letters. The second looks quite a lot like a “v”:

It appears even more convincing that the writer is the same person when two different ways of writing the “r” are included in both letter.

Finally, the writer’s rendition of “Seacrest” is remarkably similar in both instances.

Notice the follow-through from the “e” to the “a” in both words, as well as the similar “r”s. Finally, the fact that the stroke through the final “t” extends far further to the right seems like the perfect seal on the fact that today’s weird attempt to interfere with a local swim team’s sponsor and an earlier letter, written to the same team, were penned by the same person. Only the “t” was not the last shred of evidence: both letters were postmarked West Palm Beach, which is not the town in which the team is based.

I wonder if you also licked the envelope when you sealed it, and the stamp when you attached it? Anonymous trolling: you’re doing it wrong.

It’s obviously tempting to “out” the writer. If we were to print the full image of the older letter, the person’s identity would certainly be clear. But is it really worth it? The second rule of the Internet is not to feed the trolls, after all, and I think this applies, even though the correspondence was largely offline. Since it’s apparent that the person responsible reads this website with some regularity, I’m sure she’ll see this. And she’ll know that she failed.

It’s Christmas morning and for some reason NBC is showing a program about the formation of the Home Depot chain of stores. It’s actually quite interesting. Three guys had the idea, moved to Atlanta and opened one store with money they’d borrowed from friends. Money was so short they also borrowed empty boxes and paint tins from suppliers and stocked the shelves with the fake stock. The impression of service, of being busy worked and after some early losses the retailer was on its way to becoming the 2,200 store giant it is today.

I love the fake paint tins story. I’ve formed two swim clubs in my coaching career: one in New Zealand in 1990 and the other in Florida in 2009. The New Zealand club was the most difficult. Alison came up with the name “The Local Swim Team”. At first Swimming New Zealand didn’t like the name as it did not suggest a geographical location. We pointed out that the Aquahawks Club name said nothing about Napier, Comet Club said nothing about Gisborne and while our old club Gale Force, was an accurate indication of Wellington’s weather, it certainly did not mention the town. Swimming New Zealand relented and The Local was formed – well, almost formed.

In those days to be a club in New Zealand meant having a minimum of 25 members. We had two, Toni Jeffs and Jane Copland. There was nothing wrong with the quality of the team, Toni was already representing the country and Jane would one day do the same. However we were a huge 23 members short of Swimming New Zealand’s minimum. Alison and I joined. Alison’s sister, brother, brother in law and mother became members – only eighteen to go. One of Toni’s friends who couldn’t swim but worked with her in the Body Shop became a founding member. Gradually we reduced the deficit. We even found another swimmer, Nichola Chellingworth who also went on to represent New Zealand with distinction in World Championships and Pan Pacific Games. The Local Swim Team must be the only Club ever formed whose entire founding swimming membership went on to swim for their country.

Finally, we had 24 members; just one to go. I think it was Alison’s idea; what about Sammy, our cat? The forms were completed and sent to Swimming New Zealand and there, as a proud founding member, was number 25 Sammy Wright, aged three, status: beginner. Our application was accepted and for one year Sammy was just as important to our cause as his more heralded team mates. In year two Sammy retired, his work well done. By that time we had real swimmers ready to take his place. For several years Alison’s mother and brother stayed on as members, proud of the role they had played in founding The Local.

One of Sammy’s many ploys to avoid swim practice

Forming the new team in Florida was not as difficult. There were a few idiots who went out of their way to perform a late term abortion; but failed. There was no need here for feline memberships, which is good since we no longer have a cat. We operate out of two pools and work hard to attract swimmers from families whose parents cannot afford the training fees. We rely on donations to cover the training fees of our swimmers. So far it’s worked. We have had fantastic support and today about half our members receive some form of financial assistance from the swim team Board. I like it. Talent is not restricted to the rich.

Each evening outside our pool young children receive instruction in football, basketball, cheerleading, tennis and now swimming. A couple of nights ago I noticed a huge man get out of a new Cadillac Escalade and wander over to join in a pick-up game of basketball. Soon he was absorbed in the game of feints and dunks, lay ups and three pointers. His size and skill prompted me to ask the Pool Manager, did she know who he was? Turns out he’s a defensive guard for the Cincinnati Bengals football team. It also turns out that twenty years ago he began his career out on the field behind our pool. Now, he’s not too big to come back at Christmas and share a game with his old mates. As I said, talent is not restricted to the rich. I’ve always thought the purpose of what we do is not to be an afternoon babysitting service. The purpose of what we do is to provide an opportunity to excel. I’ve known many call that elitism and demand more numbers and less quality. Elitism is not a sin. Elitism gives those who want the chance to excel; the opportunity to one day come back in an Escalade to play pick-up ball with their mates.

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of politicians. Washington DC changes a person’s ideals. Or does it? This week a member of Congress heard about our new team and its work. On Thursday, a check for $1000 arrived with a simple hand written note. It said, “Hope this helps.” It does – it helps because we need the funds but mostly it helps because a national representative understands our cause, understands the importance of offering the highest quality tuition to the least of us. Thank you Congressman.

From Sammy to Washington DC that’s quite a leap. Although I guess they share the distinction of getting something good up and running.

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