The Sweetenham Report

By David

Well, it’s taken a while but we have finally obtained the Sweetenham Report. Swimming New Zealand published it on their website 20 days after being asked to provide it to Swimwatch. Of course there is no way Mike Byrne was ever going to admit it was our Official Information Act request that forced him to make the Report available. Instead of telling the truth his feeble email to the Regions sought to convey the impression of an in-touch organization sharing information with its stakeholders. It really is pathetic the way they forever choose spin over veracity.

Here at Swimwatch we were struggling to understand why Swimming New Zealand was intent on keeping the Sweetenham Report secret. The Report seemed pretty simple. It was written to set up a situation where Clive Rushton could be removed and Sweetenham’s mate, Jan Cameron, could take over high performance swimming in New Zealand. The Report provided SNZ with a philosophical basis to eliminate Clive and promote Jan to queen of the high performance realm. However, there didn’t seem to be any real need to keep that secret. Even the most casual observer of Swimming New Zealand politics understood that dynamic – Cameron’s burning ambition had made the path of her ascension to power very obvious.

And then we came across a couple of predictions that provided instant clarity; that would have caused Swimming New Zealand to bury the Sweetenham Report forever. On pages 54 and 58 Sweetenham makes two predictions that must have made his recommendations irresistible to a Swimming New Zealand and SPARC audience. Here is what Sweetenham promised. If Swimming New Zealand followed his recommendations and promoted the Millennium Institute, with Cameron in charge, he predicted this would happen.

“New Zealand’s performance at the next Olympics should be judged on 70% (minimum) of all swimmers attending the Games (all relays a must) make finals and the other 30% or better achieve semi-final status.”

It is not very well worded but what this meant was that with Cameron in charge of the Millennium Institute 70% of the swimmers attending the Beijing Olympic Games would make a final and the others would make it to the semi-finals. It’s stunningly bizarre, but do you know what? Coulter and Byrne believed him; they made Clive redundant and put Cameron in charge. Even worse they got SPARC to pay for the fairy tale.

So, what actually happened at the Games? Well, there were fifteen swimmers on that team. Two (Burmester and a relay) made finals. That’s 13% of the team compared to Sweetenham’s promise of 70%. Four (Snyders, Swanepoel, Coster and Ingram) made a semi-final – he got that right. And nine, only swam in the heats; something Sweetenham did not consider was even possible. His prediction of Cameron’s performance was 82% wrong. Is that because Sweetenham has no idea what he’s talking about or Cameron is not up the job? An error of that magnitude is probably a large chunk of both. Certainly Swimming New Zealand and SPARC bought into a con of Newman and Redford “The Sting” proportions. They financed Cameron’s Millennium experiment on a prediction that was never going to happen; that was delusional. And when the prediction was proven false – they hid the evidence. They refused to give the stakeholders the Sweetenham Report. Refused, that is until Swimwatch asked them to comply with the law of the land.

Sweetenham’s second promise was equally ridiculous. On page 54 here is what he said.

“Identify and set expected targets for 2010 Commonwealth Games, and sell to all stakeholders, “HAVE A FINALIST IN EVERY EVENT AT 2010 COMMONWEALTH GAMES”.”

Clive Rushton lost his job and Jan Cameron took over New Zealand’s High Performance program on the basis of a prediction that New Zealand would place a finalist in every event at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. It’s off the subject but if I was Clive Rushton I’d be asking for Sweetenham’s fee in “unfair dismissal” compensation. But, strange as it sounds, the Coulter Gang and SPARC swallowed the Sweetenham story – hook, line and sinker.

Not only that, but remember this is the Games that the Coulter Gang and Cameron tried to sell to New Zealand as a stellar success. In her Final Bulletin from New Delhi Cameron describes the New Zealand result in the following terms. “I believe that this was a successful campaign.” Now remember, when she said that she knew that hidden away in a Swimming New Zealand vault was a prediction that she would place a finalist in every event. So, was Cameron right? Was this a successful campaign? The table below shows all the events in New Delhi and the events where New Zealand placed swimmers in a final.

Who would have guessed it? Sweetenham had over predicted and Cameron had underperformed again. Instead of 32 finalists the New Zealand team had 13. That’s an error of 60%. How on earth could Cameron possibly describe this as a “successful campaign”?

So, there you have it. Cameron’s ascent to Millennium power was based on two predictions made in the Sweetenham Report. We now know that she delivered 82% and 60% short of those promises. The real problem though is that so many lives were changed as a result of the fabrication. Good people lost their jobs. Sons and daughters from all over New Zealand left their homes and moved to Auckland in pursuit of a dream and woke up to find out that’s all it was – just a dream. The whole thing was based on shifting sand.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for SPARC. They had access to Sweetenham’s Report. They knew what it was predicting and obviously agreed that Cameron could deliver on those promises. They probably believe in Santa Claus as well. The waste of $4-$5million since then is really their own fault. Anybody who believes in a deception of Nigerian banking proportions deserves to lose their shirt.

At Swimwatch we have consistently supported investing in the infrastructure of good coaching that exists in New Zealand – of placing responsibility for New Zealand’s swimming performance on the huge coaching talents of Kent, Winter, Horst, Duncan, Speechley, Hurring, Bouzaid and a dozen others.

And so here are two Swimwatch predictions. Invest in New Zealand’s regional coaches and we will.

  • HAVE A FINALIST IN 24 EVENTS AT THE 2014 COMMONWEALTH GAMES – GOLD IN 4, SILVER IN 4 AND BRONZE IN 4.
  • NEW ZEALAND’S PERFORMANCE AT THE 2016 OLYMPICS SHOULD BE JUDGED ON HAVING A FINALIST IN SIX EVENTS – GOLD IN 1, SILVER IN 1 AND BRONZE IN 1.

These predictions are a thousand times more realistic than the rubbish SPARC and Swimming New Zealand believed last time. How do we know this? Well, New Zealand’s best coaches are easily twice as good as the Cameron family. SPARC and Swimming New Zealand, you should try us. Unlike Cameron and Coulter and Byrne, we will not let you down. We have always over performed on our predictions.