By David

The title of this post is probably the most famous three words in literature. It has come through history to mean the ultimate betrayal by a close friend. I thought of the quote when I read an email from a colleague who attended a recent Swimming New Zealand Project Vanguard meeting. In it she told me that Cathy Hemsworth had stressed the importance of Swimming New Zealand’s view that the sport should be nationally led by one organization, with one constitution, one agenda and one set of policies, procedures and rules. If all that sounds slightly Soviet like, don’t be surprised. It is. It is also the ultimate betrayal.

If Swimming New Zealand was doing a sterling job of their current responsibilities there may be merit in them asking for more responsibility; more power. But, that is far from the case. In fact the organization is a shambles. Not because of anything the regions or the clubs have done. It’s a shambles because those responsible for running the organization in Wellington and at the Millennium Institute are doing a really bad job. There are cracks appearing all over the place and they are becoming public – for example.

On Sunday one of New Zealand’s leading newspapers, the Herald On Sunday, devoted an editorial to the problems of Swimming New Zealand. It might be possible for cynics to write Swimwatch off as uninformed. It would be more difficult to make that charge stick against the Herald On Sunday. And yet here is what they had to say:

The old adage is that sunlight is the best disinfectant. You mess up; you fess up. And when it comes to organisations that are funded with public money, the approach becomes more than just good practice: full and frank disclosure is obligatory.

When the main stream press is making that sort of editorial charge Swimming New Zealand has a huge problem. If the Herald On Sunday publically think SNZ plays fast and loose with the truth why should we believe the string of double speak coming out of the Project Vanguard hard sell road show. And it gets worse:

His infraction was described by SNZ chief executive Mike Byrne as “a couple of beers” – a term whose vagueness was always bound to encourage suspicion – and in response to further questions Byrne said: “Our feeling is that the issue is over, done and dusted.”

He was echoed by former head coach Jan Cameron, now a senior SNZ manager, who snidely wondered if the story “keeps going” because there was “nothing on to do with the All Blacks, Kiwis or whatever.”

When the public utterances of Swimming New Zealand’s two most senior managers are described by the country’s most conservative newspaper as vague and encouraging suspicion and snide the Board of Swimming New Zealand would be best to drop the whole Project Vanguard exercise and fix the mess in their own back yard. It would be a folly indeed to entrust even more responsibility to executives whose current performance is the subject of such obvious public question. Clearly Cameron and Byrne have lost the respect and trust of the New Zealand media. And our guess is that it’s only going to get worse.

The Millennium Institute high performance program is the most obvious activity run by the same two executives, Cameron and Byrne. That too is a failure. For all the trust and money put into the project New Zealand has not won a medal at the Olympic Games; in Sydney, in Athens and in Beijing; twelve years, three Olympics, ten million dollars and not a medal of any color.

Cameron and Byrne have spent their days since the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi talking up the New Zealand result. That too has been vague, suspicious and snide. Here is how Swimwatch described what actually happened. “After all the hype has gone; when the dust of superlatives has settled, the reality is that in the last ten Commonwealth Games New Zealand has performed better on six occasions. This meet ranks seventh in a list of ten.”

Whatever Swimming New Zealand and Cameron and Byrne are doing at the Millennium Institute, it isn’t working. I hope she excuses me for using her name, but it was Mellissa Ingram that first alerted me to the fact that all was not well in the Millennium Pool. I have mentioned on several occasions the time I was with US swimmers at the World Cup meets in Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin. Ingram was on her own at the same meets. She was nothing sort of brilliant; confident, tough and assured. She took on and beat the world’s greatest swimmers. Watching her swim reminded me of the days when I’d watched Walker and Quax run in Europe. I was proud to be a New Zealander and made sure my American swimmers knew it.

The next time I saw Ingram swim was at the 2010 Commonwealth Games trials. I have to say she didn’t look a patch on the athlete I’d seen in Europe. She looked hesitant and swam with nothing like the confidence she had shown a year earlier. I saw her swim again on television in New Delhi. There too her performance was cautious and tentative. And yet a week after the Games she went off on her own and swam in the Singapore World Cup meet. And she beat the world. I watched her swim on the internet and she was back to her aggressive and confident best. I could be wrong but my guess is the pressure of Cameron and SPARC and the Millennium gang is killing her and probably a few of her mates as well. I still think she is the world’s best 200 backstroke swimmer. You want her to win in London? For the love of God, send her there on her own. She knows more about what she’s doing than Cameron and all the Millennium gang put together.

Swimming New Zealand’s head office and the swimming portion of the Millennium Institute are not happy places right now. The time and effort of Swimming New Zealand’s Board would be best applied to fixing these serious issues. Certainly Byrne and Cameron should stay well away from the regions and dreams of more power; of one constitution, one agenda and one set of policies, procedures and rules.