By David

I don’t know is the honest answer. Not a day goes by that the guys running the Miskimmin swim school don’t appear to be cutting corners. Elite sport as it was taught to me by Arch Jelley, Arthur Lydiard and Duncan Laing appears to have little in common with behaviour we seem to witness in Miskimmin’s swim team.

I suspect many Swimwatch readers are certain that I am on some sort of avenging crusade. And of course that’s true. I believe deeply that the policy and structure promoted and paid for by Miskimmin is not good for swimming, damages New Zealand’s swimming talent and will fail to win an Olympic Game’s swimming event. I will do all in my power to lobby for a change; to promote an alternative strategy.

What I never imagined was the seemingly endless stream of suspect decisions coming out of the new Miskimmin Swimming New Zealand. Decisions that misinformed the national media; decisions that resulted in swimmers diving into an illegally shallow pool, decisions that resulted in misleading emails being sent to most Wairarapa swimming families, decisions that omitted open water swimmers from team presentations, decisions that resulted in unapproved swimsuits being sold contrary to FINA rules and a dozen other examples of questionable management. When he first arrived in New Zealand the CEO of Swimming New Zealand decided New Zealand coaches were a good target for his Australian caustic comment. As things have turned out Christian Renford should have concentrated of running his business and let us get on with running ours. The evidence suggests we may be quite a bit better at it that he is.

Anyway, back to today. I happened to be looking through a Swimming New Zealand document titled; “Nomination Criteria – 2014 Commonwealth Games (Pool).” I have to confess I have still not studied it carefully. However even a cursory scan of the qualifying rules comes up with two anomalies that I think need an explanation.

The first is clause 1 on page 4. This is what it says.

“2.4 seconds will be deducted from the total sum of times of the 4 fastest swimmers in the A Final of the 100m and 200m freestyle events at the NZ Champs, to calculate the estimated time of the relay (relay changeovers 0.8 sec x3).”

I suspect Swimming New Zealand knew they were in trouble getting swimmers fast enough to qualify for individual events and decided to pad the team with relay swimmers. Why do I think that might be what has happened? Well, for years in New Zealand and most other administrations a relay change-over has been given a value of 0.65 seconds. But the Miskimmin swim team obviously decided that was not going to be enough. The swimmers needed a softer target. What better way than to increase the take-over time allowance from 0.65 per swimmer to 0.8 per swimmer? Why else would Swimming New Zealand have made that change?

Certainly we all deserve an explanation. Perhaps Renford could use his Freestyle Newsletter to explain something important.

The second apparent anomaly I discovered is clause 5 on page 6. This is what it says;

“Attendance at the NZ Champs is on a user pays basis.”

I really would like this checked out. The Miskimmin’s swim school has published a set of criteria that must govern the conduct of everyone attending the national championships. The rules apply to everyone – or at least they should.

And yet I have been told Millennium swimmers stayed in a Henderson motel at no cost to them or a hugely SNZ subsidised amount. Is this true? And if it is, why can members of Miskimmin’s swim school ignore the rules. Did every Millennium swimmer pay their personal meet entry fees? Was any food or massage provided by Swimming New Zealand? Was the cost of transport from motel to pool subsidized in any way by Swimming New Zealand? Because if any of those things happened Renford may well have breached his own rules.

This organization belongs to its members. Swimming is not the personal play thing of a small clique of Miskimmin minions. In both the cases mentioned above there is the suspicion of duplicity. That impression needs an explanation; requires clarity. And that duty is your responsibility, Christian Renford.