Archive for October, 2018

Lunatics Are Running The Asylum

Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

Along with every other coach in the country I have been sent a 1400 word page of platitudes from Gary Francis. Gee, he has the most annoying way of writing. It is all – “thank you for that”; “I am so pleased about this”; “Let’s all sit around the camp-fire massaging each other’s egos and singing Kum Ba Yah”. I swear most of us could have written the Francis email in 300 words.

The heart and soul of his message are three changes to the New Zealand competition program.

  1. Moving the selection meet for the 2019 World Youth Championships back from June to April at NAGs.
  2. The NZ Open Championship would remain in June for 2019.
  3. Olympic trials in 2020 would be moved to early April 2020.

In my view they are good changes. Well done Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) on detecting a ridiculous program and initiating steps to fix the problems. Francis says, “The current calendar is not advantageous.” That is as close as Francis ever gets to admitting it’s a load of rubbish.

Accepting the value of the proposed changes begs the question of why this post should be titled “Lunatics are Running the Asylum”. There are several reasons.

First – what took them so long? For two years Swimwatch and others have been saying the middle of winter, right before the short course championships, was a ludicrous time. But of course when Francis finally clicks onto the same thing it’s announced with all the wonder of Christ revealing himself to Paul on the road to Damascus. Like their change away from centralised training it is too little, too late.

Second – if the June meet is wrong, why is Gary Francis waiting until 2020 to change it? It is typical of his indecision. If it’s wrong, change it now. Francis seems to have no idea that an elite athlete’s time at the top is very short. Not everyone is Michael Phelps. For most, it’s five or six years and that’s it. Francis has just told us he’s prepared to spend 33% of that time making a change of date. Francis tells us that wasting a third of an athlete’s career on a bad decision is just fine by him. Well I don’t think so.

Francis says “The reason for this is that it is too late to move it – coaches and swimmers have made 12 month plans and are already focusing on the preparation for June.” Once again we come back to SNZ being the problem. The reason is not that coaches already have plans in place; the reason is it took Francis and his mates far too long to do anything about it. Remember the decision to go to June was made by SNZ. This is SNZ correcting their own error and taking another eighteen months to do it.

I have no idea how the pathetic Francis excuse ties in in with the decision to immediately change the youth selection meet back to April. There is no logic to that at all. The Opens can’t change but changing the age groups – no problem. It’s nonsense. Is Francis trying to tell us that coaches plan senior swimmer’s programs a year in advance but neglect their good young swimmers? If he is, that’s nonsense too.

Third – how long-term is long-term? At least Francis is consistent. He has been on about planning for the long-term since he arrived ten months ago. The speed he takes to do anything makes us fully aware that he means what he says – long-term is long-term. Daniel Hunter will be in an old age home by the time the Francis plan is revealed.

Francis says, “My intention was to gather evidence throughout my first 12 months and through consultation, observation and comparison with other nations.” This is not some academic Loughborough exercise. This is swimmers’ lives. New Zealand’s best swimmers haven’t got twelve months to waste while Francis brings himself up to speed on what world swimming is about. He should have known that stuff before he started. It is incredible that we are paying over $100,000 for Gary Francis to educate himself. It’s even more incredible that Francis is happy to waste a third of Gabrielle Fa’amausili’s career reading books and talking on the phone.

Fourth – have there been too many changes?    Francis says, “Swimming in New Zealand has had so many changes of direction at the HP end over the last 7 years. Simply making immediate changes again just didn’t seem right.” That tells us all we need to know about the Francis attitude towards change. Since Jan Cameron introduced centralised training there has been no change. Oh, a fleet of coaches have come and gone, CEOs have walked through the revolving door and offices have shifted but the core has doubled down, hanging on to the past like a clamp. In spite of what Francis says the speed of change at SNZ has been zero.

Fifth – beware of the trend to regional teams. Francis does not know enough about swimming to remember when I took SNZ to the High Court to secure the right for a coach and club to take their team to the National Championships. Before that case all swimmers went to the Championships as part of a regional team. There was no option. I wanted our team to travel as a club coached by Gary Hurring. I went to the High Court asking for an injunction to have the Championships stopped until SNZ allowed our team to travel as a club, Gary coached, team. One hour before the Court case SNZ phoned me and approved the change to club-based teams. And that is what we have today. That was a hard won and expensive case. It secured a freedom we should all respect. Beware of the motives of those, like Francis, who are in the business of stripping those rights away.

And finally – Francis says, “Yet again, I stress this is still the tip of the ice berg!” We hear you. We are also aware that it was the underwater bit that sunk the Titanic.

A Fish Rots From The Head Down

Monday, October 22nd, 2018

 What’s with Peter Miskimmin and aliens. In January 2018 another foreigner, this time an Australian, was appointed to run High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ). His name is Michael Scott and he has just burst into print in the NZ Herald. Scott calls his article a report “on the state of sport in NZ”. If that is true, sport in New Zealand is in serious peril. There is not much point in reading this nonsense. But if you have ten minutes to waste here is the link. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=12146053

Talk about a waste of 700 words. This stuff is genuine rubbish. Weeks before the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games I saw Dame Valerie Adams and her coach working for hours, putting shot after shot out on the field behind the Millennium swimming pool. It is in scenes like that you will find the future of New Zealand sport. Currently sport in New Zealand rewards the author of this drivel seven times more than the world’s best shot putter. That’s right, for being a multiple Olympic Champion Adams is paid about $60,000. Scott is paid close to half a million.

You want to see abuse in New Zealand sport? Try those numbers for a start. Scott’s NZ Herald article says, “In response to the Heron Report, HPSNZ has drawn a line in the sand. There is absolutely no doubt we need to strike a better balance between winning on the world stage and the welfare of athletes. I believe athlete welfare can become New Zealand’s competitive advantage.”

Scott is the problem. He lives the lie. While he values himself seven times more than one of the best female athletes in the world he should back off lecturing us on the subject of athlete’s welfare. He represents a class of bureaucrat that has taken over sport in New Zealand and is rotting it from the head down. When his thirteen point plans include paying female champions a lot more than the self-important CEO of a government quango, his plans may have some merit. Until then Scott’s words mean nothing. Until then Scott is the personification of the abuse of Valerie Adams and every other athlete in the country.

Swimming is full of the same welfare abuse. How else would you describe New Zealand’s best swimmers struggling to find $5,300 to represent us at the World Championships while bureaucrats, Johns and Francis, swan around the world for free?

That is the substance of what’s wrong with Scott’s article. But the rest of his report tells us why Miskimmin employed the guy. It is full of meaningless jargon – just the sort of stuff that Miskimmin loves. Here are a few examples.

Our 13 Point Plan – a project recently initiated by HPSNZ to evolve and strengthen New Zealand’s high performance system.

“New Zealand’s high performance system”. What is that? Is that John Walker up on the Waitakere Ranges on a cold wet Sunday morning? Is that Valerie Adams practicing the shot behind the Millennium Institute? Is it Eyad midway through 100x100s on 1.30? I have coached a lot of international athletes and doubt that any “high performance system” would have improved their life or their performance in any way.

Three of our 13 workstreams address the recommendations of Heron’s report: Athlete welfare (including an athlete voice mechanism), a review of our strategy and investment model (how and on what terms we invest in athletes and sports on behalf of the Government), and a re-examination of our pinnacle event debrief process.

This is all too much – “an athlete voice mechanism”? What does that mean? I suspect it’s words to justify Scott’s inflated salary. If he means listening to athlete’s worries, good coaches have been doing that since the Greek physician and trainer, Hippocrates, 400 years before Christ.

And then there is “our strategy and investment model”. Do these guys ever listen to themselves? I’ve been lucky enough to discuss sport with all sorts of world authorities. None of them resort to this BS. Can you imagine what Steve Hansen would make of a “strategy and investment model” for winning an All Black’s game?

And finally, “a re-examination of our pinnacle event debrief process”. Remind me to keep any athlete of mine away from this guy. Most of us spend our lives trying to make elite sport as easy as possible. This Australian creates confusion. I’ve always found, “How was that?” to be a perfectly adequate “pinnacle event debrief process”.

Fit for purpose and right for New Zealand

Talk about jargon. I have this mental picture of slightly overweight Australian grinning with delight at the wonder of the mind that produced this master thought. No wonder New Zealand takes the piss out of the IQ of our nearest penal colony.

What we can do is review our funding model through the collaborative working group model of our 13 point plan.

Perhaps I was too quick to judge the IQ of Australians. This one must be very bright. He clearly understands what this means. He must do, he wrote it. If the purpose of words is to communicate meaning, I doubt that I am alone in not understanding most of his article. I suspect not one person in ten reading the NZ Herald understands much of what Scott is trying to say.

Outside of the 13 Point Plan, HPSNZ and Sport NZ will work together on a reassessment of the business capability support we provide sporting bodies.

Didn’t I tell you Miskimmin was in on the joke? Perhaps that’s why he employs Australians. He enjoys the humour they bring to the job. Certainly he seems to be willing to accept the Australian’s invitation to a “reassessment of the business capability support”. No one in the room, except the Australian, will understand why they are there. But Amanda White is making coffee at 10.00 o’clock so all is well.

The abuse of the English language has occupied far too much of this article. The more important point is the devaluation of athletes in New Zealand. Currently the value placed on champion athletes is the most basic welfare abuse. And the key abusers are Miskimmin and Scott, followed closely by Johns and Francis. Their abuse of Adams, Perry, Godwin, Walsh and dozens of others is important and structural. It goes right to the heart of sport’s athlete’s welfare problems. It is the source of much of the coaching and administration abuse that follows. When New Zealand sport values an Olympic medallist seven times less that an Australian bureaucrat or an ex-club age-group coach that opens up an environment where all abuse can prosper.

New Zealand athletes are undervalued. Bad treatment is a product of that disrespect. Miskimmin, Scott Johns and Francis are the problem. They are the abuse that dominates New Zealand sport. Until that is fixed all Scott’s words are band-aids on a broken body. As I have said sport is rotting from the head down.

Tell A Big Lie Frequently And It Will Be Believed

Sunday, October 21st, 2018

 This horrifying quote was first expressed by Adolf Hitler. Sadly for humanity Hitler practiced his own counsel. Donald Trump does the same thing. Over and over again Trump told the world that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest ever. It wasn’t, but the evangelical bigots who support Trump were convinced.

I would never suggest that Steve Johns is as corrupt as Adolph Hitler or Donald Trump. He is no world leader. He does though have a bad habit of repeating himself in the hope that he will be believed. In both the emails he has sent to me he has repeatedly asked me to come to his office with an assurance that the facts about Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) are in his possession. To find out what is really going on in SNZ all I need to do is ask the one who really knows, Wonder Boy Steve.

With some justification I don’t believe Steve Johns’ open government story. On a dozen occasions I have asked Steve Johns for information. I have never received a reply. I imagine Steve Johns would hide behind the qualification that my questions needed to be delivered in person.

While snubbing me might be understandable, I am wondering how many other people he ignores. Failing to answer correspondence is not a known characteristic of good executive behavior. In fact failing to reply to an email or a letter is bloody rude. But does Steve Johns care? It seems not.

A week ago Athens’ Olympic Swimming Champion, Rhi Jeffrey, read about the financial plight of New Zealand swimmers selected to compete in the World Short Course Championships. Like many swimmers around the world Rhi was upset by the injustice of swimmers paying for themselves while SNZ staff have their costs fully funded. Rhi is not one to talk behind anyone’s back. She decided to write to Steve Johns to express her disappointment. This is what her email said.

Dear Steve,

My name is Rhi Jeffrey and I am an American Olympic gold medalist from 2004 in Athens Greece. I had the pleasure of swimming in your country for two years before you were in charge so I have also had intimate experience with your organization. I must say, I was disappointed back then and am more disappointed (outraged even) at how it is being run now. I saw this story about you charging your athletes and not your staff to compete at World Championships. SHAME ON YOU. Your swimmers are WHY your staff have jobs to begin with. I have not heard of any country that requires their swimmers pay to attend Worlds. I see your staff member Amanda White tried to explain why you do such things and all I could see was more smoke and mirrors. She claims they have always paid for themselves in the past, not true. FINA reimbursement for travel has also been redacted from your cost analysis breakdown. To me, that seems like you are trying to hide something. On top of that, to attack the man who is trying to shed light on this atrocity by telling him it’s just a tirade is something out of America’s GOP playbook. He should be outraged. I am outraged. My American Olympian friends I have shared this with are outraged. I understand money doesn’t grow on trees, but is there any effort by SNZ to raise this money for their athletes? No. I own my own swim team sir, and if I had kids make a World Champ team I would be doing everything In the organizations power to make sure they didn’t pay a dime, they’ve earned it!!! I am going to continue to use my platform and voice to show to the masses just how greedy and vile your organization is being with this decision and your justifications after the fact. If you want to save face, I suggest you start looking in to how you can help these athletes attend this meet. SWIMMERS DO NOT MAKE MUCH MONEY! To ask them to do this is selfish and makes me think there is a hidden agenda here (what is the FINA subsidy for this meet for instance?). No wonder your swimmers have trouble performing, if I had to answer to you lot I’d swim slower on purpose. Search your soul (if you have one) and do what’s right for the athletes. Even if it comes at the expense of your staff. That’s how it SHOULD be. Your staff wouldn’t go anywhere if none of the swimmers could afford it. Why should they get the free ride. NOT RIGHT!!!

Rhi Jeffrey

I don’t know how often Steve Johns gets correspondence from Olympic Swimming Gold Medalists. Not often is my guess. You would think an email from someone as well known in international swimming circles as Rhi would deserve a reply. I would hope that anyone who writes to the CEO of SNZ would receive the courtesy of a reply. Not this CEO it seems. Certainly Rhi is still waiting. Steve Johns’ behaviour is unacceptable and rude. I would be appalled if Cotterill allowed his CEO to get away with failing to reply to correspondence. There is no excuse for crass bad manners.

Why does Steve Johns fail so often to put things in writing? Why does he insist on meetings in his office? Why does he not reply to Rhi? I think there is a reason for all that. I think he is one of those people who wants as little as possible to be in writing. If it’s verbal, Steve Johns feels safe. He can spin it later anyway he wants. If it is in black and white the room for spin is far too restricted for Steve Johns liking. That’s why he doesn’t reply to Rhi. That’s why he wants me to sit in his office. In my opinion he is as shifty as all can be.

The problem now is that many of the world’s best swimmers, people like Rhi, are convinced that the CEO of SNZ is mean, rude and a coward. It will be interesting to see whether Steve Johns ever gets around to sending Rhi a reply. I hope he does. Failure to do so is seriously damaging the reputation of New Zealand swimming around the world.

In Legal Jeopardy?

Saturday, October 20th, 2018

Recent Swimwatch posts have discussed the injustice of Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) charging swimmers to represent New Zealand in the 2018 World Short Course Championships. A central feature of our outrage is the inequality between self-financing athletes and fat-cat officials, like Gary Francis, sitting back being paid for by us. But foremost in the overindulged category are New Zealand’s FINA officials who travel to these events. The past and current Presidents of Swimming New Zealand, Dr Dave Gerrard and Leslie Huckins, are in that category.

When these guys travel the world at FINA or WADA’s expense they really do live on the fat of the land. There is no user-pays for them. New Zealand swimming officials seem to have the view that, of course, swimmers should pay for themselves. Swimmers only have to train twice a day and compete against the world’s best. Gerrard and Huckins are officials. They have nine o’clock breakfasts to get to followed by two hour rules seminars. Besides that there are three remits to vote on. You try holding your hand up that many times. Of course they need to fly business class and sleep in 5-star hotels.

But foremost among the perks New Zealand FINA officials received is a daily expense allowance. In Dr Gerrard and Leslie Huckins’ case the allowance is probably around $NZ500 per day. On an eleven day trip to China for the World Championships, if they are going, Gerrard and Huckins will each be given $5,500 in spending money. Those two are possibly getting more in spending money than the $5,300 SNZ is charging New Zealand’s best swimmers to travel to the meet – it’s a bloody disgrace.

But what I find really interesting are the tax implications of these payments. Depending on what other income Gerrard and Huckins receive, this $5,500 income perk will be taxed at 30%. In other words Gerrard and Huckins will each owe the New Zealand Government $1,650. But the question is, will this income be declared? There are two ways we could find out. We could ask the New Zealand tax authorities to do an audit or we could ask Steve Johns to provide us with the information necessary to do our own audit.

After all Steve Johns has assured us that SNZ is in a new age of open and transparent government. In that spirit I am sure Johns could email me with a list of the SNZ members that, during the past five years, have attended FINA or WADA delegate’s sessions and how many days they were away from New Zealand. From there we can quickly work out how much daily allowance they were paid and what tax is due. We can then ask the tax department to investigate whether the tax was paid. Oh, and while Steve Johns is at it, could he let me know whether he was paid a daily allowance on his recent unnecessary junket to Japan and whether Gary Francis is being paid a daily allowance while he is at the World Championships?

The tax aspect of this interests me because the example Gerrard and Huckins receive from the top of FINA is not good. For example Dale Neuburger, FINA Vice-President and USA delegate, says he gives most of his daily allowance to charity and the amount he keeps is to cover his time away from work – his work, of course, is director of a consultancy firm that has million-dollar contracts running with FINA for organizing clinics and seminars.

We need to constantly check that Johns, Francis, Gerrard and Huckins are being honest. The ease with which Gerrard and Huckins take, paid for, business class flights and live it up in swanky hotels for free when New Zealand’s finest swimmers are struggling to pay for themselves suggests we have every reason to be cautious. New Zealand is an honest country. In 2017 it was ranked first in the world for honesty. We need to make sure it stays that way.

However even if Gerrard and Huckins have dealt with their tax properly, every swimmer on this New Zealand team should remember, if they bump into Dave Gerrard or Leslie Huckins around the World Championship pool, those two are being paid more in pocket money by FINA than the swimmers were stung by SNZ to get themselves to the Championship. That alone is enough to tell me that Huckins and Gerrard have little or no interest in their swimmer’s welfare. Instead of waking up late in some 5-star hotel, they should be working to find a way to raise the $100,000 it would cost to get every New Zealand swimmer to the Championships for free. That’s what a good boss would do. Seems these two don’t fit the description.

Scrooge Speaks

Friday, October 19th, 2018

 

 On Wednesday I received the following email from the CEO of Swimming New Zealand (SNZ), Steve Johns.

17‎ ‎Oct at ‎4‎:‎53‎ ‎PM

David

I have been informed by a third party that you have had another outburst on your blog this time relating to the cost to swimmers for the upcoming world short course championships and continue to personally attack Swimming NZ staff.  You however continue to not have the decency or courage to take two additional steps from your morning café stop and walk through our office door to speak to us personally.  As I have communicated before, our door is always open and we would happily provide you with the facts before you head off on another of your vitriolic tirades.

Perhaps if you had of asked for the information that Amanda has provided you below before you wrote you article, another personal attack on SNZ staff and SNZ could have been avoided – but probably not!

The door is open, the facts are here.

Steve.

I love these guys who begin their emails with phrases like, “I have been informed by a third party that you have had another outburst on your blog.” That’s a coded message designed to tell me Johns never reads Swimwatch. The truth is, Steve Johns does read Swimwatch. The implied lack of interest is simply not true.

He calls my interest in New Zealand swimmers being charged $5,300 to represent the country in a world Championships “another outburst” and a “vitriolic tirade”. That attitude says all we need to know about Steve Johns. It reeks of personal attack and arrogance. It demonstrates more clearly than I could ever put into words the heartlessness of the guy running Swimming New Zealand (SNZ). All we are asking is for 18 swimmers to have their costs paid. That is not an outburst or vitriolic. That is called caring.

And I am not alone. I see that Olympic Champion, Rhi Jeffrey, has expressed her support for the swimmers as has New Zealand open record holder and representative Jane Copland. I guess their outbursts are vitriolic as well. No, their views show they care about the sport that dominated their lives for two decades. They care about the welfare of those who are traveling the journey they once took. They care about words like justice and fair and right. Fact is Steve Johns is beginning to look like a self-centered, heartless hypocrite; happy to live on an inflated wage and starve the workers. As Rhi has said, no wonder New Zealand struggles to win a race. This whole episode has turned Johns and Francis into the laughing stock of world swimming. The world is wondering what sort of circus is going on down here. No one is impressed.

I confess Johns’ email is the first occasion I’ve been accused of being a coward. Steve Johns should have worked it out by now that I do not intend to interrupt my morning green tea (note to Johns – it is not coffee). If SNZ want to talk to me I’m happy to meet Bruce Cotterill. I’m not interested in the oily rag when the Chief Engineer is available.

However Johns’ last sentence did attract my attention. – “The door is open, the facts are here”. In addition to the facts being available, the SNZ High Performance Manager, Amanda White, assured us that SNZ is intent of delivering “100% transparency”. In this new spirit of openness could Steve Johns provide answers to the following questions?

SNZ has a number of members who have strong links to FINA. Because of their membership of FINA Committees Dave Gerrard and Lesley Huckins are the most obvious examples. But New Zealand also has a number of FINA list officials. Some of these are shown in the following table.

Category Names
Referees Matt Meehan, Ron Clarke, Dianne Farmer, Christine Cassin, Carlrine Gillespie, Gavin Ion
Starters Greg Forsythe, Jacqui Forsythe, Graham Seagull, Alan Hale
Open Water John West, Matt Meehan, Greg Forsythe, Ross Gillespie, Paul Matson, Marian Williams, Gavin Ion.

In addition to these nineteen names there may be others. I would appreciate Steve Johns emailing me with the names of any New Zealand FINA officials attending the 2018 World Championships. Because of the positions they hold on FINA Committees, I am especially interested in Lesley Huckins and Dave Gerrard. Are either of these officials attending the 2018 World SC Meet?

The reason for my interest is because if New Zealand officials are traveling to China to attend the accompanying FINA sessions, their travel will contrast starkly with the New Zealand swimmers making the same journey. Talk about master and slave – FINA and SNZ own that relationship.

In this case each official gets full travel and medical insurance, a business class airfare, 5-star accommodation, linking transport all the way, free meals for the duration and a daily allowance of between $120 and $500 plus, depending on what “level” they “serve” at, plus “gifts”, the stuff the sponsors supply to all delegates, including baseball caps, jackets, FINA uniform (for those who do need one as well as those who don’t need one – “please take the suit, Dr Gerrard – we need it for the group photo”).

The average delegate heading to China will account for a budget of around $7,000 and at the top end of the scale, for someone like Dave Gerrard you are looking at a budget of between $20,000 and upwards of $25,000 each.

That’s just to go to China, attend a couple of meetings, with coffee, biscuits, lunch and talk through an agenda set largely by FINA and then vote according to how they are ordered to do so, knowing that if you vote otherwise, you will simply be ignored and/or got rid of as soon as they can manage it.

No one will convince me that swimming in New Zealand is a healthy sport when 18 swimmers struggle to pay their own airfares and entry fees while the current President and past President swan about in business class airplanes and 5-star hotels. Because if Gerrard or Huckins are going that’s what the difference will be. That discrimination is not welcome in the sport or the country I call home.