We Need More Volunteers

July 9th, 2010

By David

“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.

Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »

Swimming Training Camps

July 3rd, 2010

By David

An important element in any democracy is the protected right to question those who lead. Governments and their bureaucracies need to be accountable. When representatives spend tax payer’s money on hotel video porn it is appropriate for them to be asked to explain. That is not dissent. It is not even unreasonable. It is good government.

With this in mind it is appropriate to question a report published this week on the New Zealand swim team’s trip to the Mare Nostrum Barcelona and Canet meets and an eleven day training camp after the competition. There is much in the report that is difficult to understand. We will not print the whole thing here. It’s a bit long for that, but we will reproduce those points that raise puzzling questions. Questioning the tour’s report should not be mistaken as a criticism of the athletes involved. Swimwatch is on record as supporting fine performances by these swimmers at World Cups and New Zealand Championships. Our concern is what they were asked to do and not how they did it.

From the outset it was difficult to understand the purpose of the trip. Early in the tour a separate report began its coverage with:

“They have just stepped off the plane after 36 hours flying to Barcelona from New Zealand 24 hours previously, are still in heavy training. [sic]”

That has always seemed strange to me. Why would you spend $30,000 or $40,000 flying a team to the other side of the world to race the planet’s best athletes and own up to being badly prepared – arriving late and still in heavy training? If it’s worth the cost of flying to Spain to find good competition it seems important to arrive in a fit condition to race properly. Presumably that’s why you find good competition – to race them properly. It’s difficult to find a meet these days when the New Zealand team is not “still in heavy training”. It leaves the impression of preparing an excuse ahead of time should things go wrong at the meet. Or perhaps it’s true; rest for New Zealand swimmers is restricted to once every two years; to the week before a Commonwealth or Olympic Games.

The Mare Nostrum series involves three meets; one each in Monte Carlo, Canet and Barcelona. On this trip the New Zealand team skipped the one in Monte Carlo. That doesn’t seem like good economics; to fly all that way and only swim in two of the three meets. Doing all three gives 33% more racing for maybe 6% more cost; at least that’s the way it worked out the four times I’ve done these meets. Similarly why were the team taken to Narbonne for their training camp. There is nothing wrong with Narbonne. It’s a nice town with a good pool. But the New Zealand team had just finished racing down the road in Canet which is a nicer town, a better pool, has far cheaper accommodation and the team was already there. The last time I was in Canet, in 2009, we rented a lovely French villa for four swimmers for $1000 for the entire week. I bet Narbonne cost New Zealand more than that.

I notice the report on the trip says the swimmers were put through a “punishing training regime.” We are told “they worked their tails off for two weeks in France.” The report then defines the “punishing training regime” as “130kms of training in the 11 days in Narbonne with three training sessions a day.” I struggle to understand how swimming 130 kilometers in 11 days; that’s a rate of only 82 kilometers a week, qualifies as punishing; not when 90 to 100 kilometers a week is the standard training fare for just about every swimmer New Zealand is about to race in the Pan Pacific Games. At three sessions a day the New Zealander’s average training distance was something less than 4000 meters a session which stretches the definition of “punishing” just a bit.

The Nation’s best swimmers got through their 82 kilometer week, we are told, because:

“We trained outdoors in an excellent facility so it was pretty pleasant. We would have struggled to achieve the same level of performance with this sort of training block at home.”

What on earth is the matter with that Millennium Pool? Before Prime Minister John Key invests $40million upgrading the facility someone should tell him that New Zealand’s best swimmers find swimming 80 kilometers a week in the current 50 meter pool a real struggle. I’ve seen 100 kilometers a week swum many times in the Clive Pool in Hawkes Bay, in the Swimgym Pool in Hastings, in a four lane pool in the US Virgin Islands, in the Onekawa Aquatic Center in Napier, in the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre, in an open air pool in Florida and in the Freyberg Pool in Wellington. The Clive Pool is unventilated (unless someone leaves the doors open), has almost no lighting and no windows. It could handle someone swimming 20 kilometers a week further than the New Zealand team managed in France. God knows what problems must exist at the Millennium Institute Pool to make a very modest weekly mileage of 80 kilometers such a struggle.

The report concludes with a look into the future. “Our main emphasis will be the Commonwealth Games. Pan Pacs will be a tougher level meet and we will be looking to swim fast there. If you don’t swim fast in the morning heat you don’t get a second swim.” That’s another thing I’ve never really understood. If winning at the London Olympics is New Zealand Swimming’s primary goal, why on earth choose the easy meet now as the center of your attention. Clearly Pan Pacs is recognized as the tougher meet. In that case and if you are at all serious about winning anything in London that’s the meet you should be chasing. After all, that’s the meet where Burmester needs to beat Phelps and Thomas needs to finish ahead of Couglin. But, no, New Zealand’s “main emphasis” is the easy option. That seldom wins an Olympic Games.

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

Thank You For Pointing That Out

June 25th, 2010

By David

Two weeks ago Swimwatch published a story that included an email comment received from Arch Jelley’s brother and some emails on swimming in New Zealand. The item was titled “Training Gem”. We received several comments on the article. It is worthwhile looking at one of these. It is a fine example of the level of intellectual debate being applied to the subject of international swimming in New Zealand just now.

In order to avoid the accusation of taking the reader’s comments out of context I have shown the unedited email first and then examined each of its points.

“You seem to have the Barcelona and the Atlanta Olympics both in 1992. You talk about swimmers as though they are the coaches personal property. Swimmers can make their own decisions about who the train with. Hopefully this will involve analising where the best chance of success is. Where the best coaches, facilities and somewhere that has had a good track record over the years. Sounds like North Shore Swimming Club. As for the forigners comment, thats plain racist. Is that why your back? Because the US had had enough of forgien know it alls. Cameron has put a lot more into NZ swimming than you ever had with limited success with a few swimmers.”

The first sentence is absolutely correct. The table in our article mistakenly labeled the Atlanta Olympic Games as 1992. It was of course 1996; sorry about that. However while we are on the subject of editorial correctness this reader may care to note that “coaches personal property” needs an apostrophe, “who the train with” should read who to train with, “analising” is spelt analysing, “forgien” is spelt foreign, “forigners” is spelt foreigners and, in this case, needs an apostrophe, “your” should be you’re, “thats” should be that’s and “know it alls” is better understood with hyphens in place.
One of the email’s most damning accusations is that the foreigner’s comment is just “plain racist.” The reader is referring to the sentence in which I said, “Without question, we were better when New Zealanders took care of their own business.” First of all the statement is true. New Zealand swimmers did perform better when New Zealanders such as Naylor, Lang, Bone, Brown and Cotterill were running things. The table of results is quite conclusive. That’s not racist. It simply promotes New Zealand. For example, I notice the “Buy New Zealand” organization says, “The basic aim of encouraging consumers to buy New Zealand goods has not changed. Most people share the common human inclination to support their local community.” Most people, it seems, does not include this Swimwatch reader. Patriotism should not be confused with racism.

And second, the statement is true. Elite swimming in New Zealand is packed full of imports from Australia, Europe, the UK and now Canada. And it’s not as though we need to import. Most of New Zealand’s best coaches have been New Zealanders; Duncan Lang, Arthur Lydiard, Arch Jelley, Richard Tonks, Fred Allen, Brian Lahore, Rusty Robertson, Lois Muir and Mike Walsh. Every sport has a duty to promote, encourage and develop its domestic coaching talent. That is not best done by filling every available spot with an import. I know a highly qualified New Zealander who applied for an elite performance position at the Millennium Institute recently. He didn’t even get an interview before a foreigner was appointed. Being concerned about that sort of thing is not racist. I’d say it was simply a case of wanting to strengthen home grown coaches and sporting talent in the way Lydiard did when he was imported into Finland.

The reader’s third point is a clear bit of PR for the North Shore Swim Club and, by association, the Millennium Institute. Here is what he says:

“ Hopefully this will involve analising where the best chance of success is. Where the best coaches, facilities and somewhere that has had a good track record over the years. Sounds like North Shore Swimming Club.”

The misspelling of analysing is as unfortunate as it is hilarious. Success in New Zealand swimming requires some analising? Oh dear.

I’m not too sure about the reader’s best coaches’ claim but the money, facilities and general largess implied in his comment is certainly true. Thank you for pointing it out. And that’s the problem. The centralization of resources represented by the Millennium Institute and its associated activities is not in the best interests of swimming. Very soon the Institute will look like those huge hotels, swimming pools and sports grounds built in Moscow during the Soviet era. They didn’t work all that well there and I suspect will suffer the same fate in our hemisphere. It would be far better to apply resources to the work Natalie Wiegersma’s coach is doing in Invercargill or to swimming in Wellington, or to United in Auckland. Whatever happened to the National Party’s values of a “competitive” New Zealand based on “limited government”? Prime Minister Key seems to have strayed from that vision when he endorsed socialized sport on the North Shore.

Swimmers involved in socialized sport can’t really make their own decision on where to train. Not when the “swimming state” provides them with the money to live. I’d bet a week’s pay that several state swimmers can’t stand their training circumstances. But when tomorrow’s dinner depends on staying at Auckland’s North Shore, they stay. I’m also pretty sure it’s not the best way to win an Olympic Gold Medal.

Our correspondent ends his memo with two lines of personal insults. That’s a shame. The future of swimming deserves a debate that does not involve insults from the gutter. When they are used like this it usually indicates a weak argument and a source, desperate to protect the status quo. In this case both are unquestionably true.

Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »

Championship Talent

June 22nd, 2010

By David

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in New Zealand, Racing | No Comments »

Training Gem

June 14th, 2010

By David

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

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

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

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

Stan Jelley (now 83 and not running.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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