For twenty years swimming in New Zealand was taken through a Soviet era of centralised control. Jan Cameron and Bruce Cotterill were New Zealand swimming’s Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. When Cameron and Cotterill finally moved on, just like Stalin and Khrushchev, they had spent millions ($25million to be exact) and left the current Board with a wasteland – “I think we are in rats’ alley, Where the dead men lost their bones.”

Nick Tongue, Steve Johns and Gary Francis have never received sufficient credit for abandoning the centralised model and replacing it with a club and region diversified alternative. Ignore the Wellington Facebook critic. He is a “Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” A diversified foundation has been put in place from which swimming in New Zealand can grow and prosper. But reform should not stop here. Step one has been taken. So where to now? Here are my thoughts on that subject.

Two principles should guide Swimming New Zealand’s (SNZ) future.

1. SNZ’s primary function should be to create and maintain a healthy diversified environment in which the sport throughout New Zealand can prosper and grow.
2. Every decision should recognise a principle described by track coach, Arthur Lydiard as, “There are champions everywhere. Every street’s got them. All we need to do is train them properly.”

The obvious negative that screams from these principles is AVOID CENTRALISATION. Diversity and healthy competition are the lifeblood of sport. For example, I heard that two clubs in Hamilton had joined forces. There is nothing wrong with that. The cooperation is in the same city. It is strengthening the sport in a local area. It would become a negative only if SNZ encouraged the best swimmers in Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Otorohanga, Te Kuiti and Taumaranui to be absorbed into some burgeoning Hamilton empire.

The principle of swimming’s growth is based on strengthening swimming and especially the coaching of swimming in Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Otorohanga, Te Kuiti and Taumaranui – not stripping clubs of their best swimmers.

Years ago, SNZ used a phrase in their publications that said, “Excellence in every pool”. SNZ never meant it and never followed policies likely to make it happen, but the idea was exactly right.

So how should SNZ strengthen swimming in New Zealand’s base? How should swimming be strengthened in Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Otorohanga, Te Kuiti, Wairoa, Foxton, Levin, Stratford, Wanaka, Taihape, Taumaranui, Westport, Waipukurau, Cromwell, Queenstown and dozens of other New Zealand towns? After all New Zealand has recently seen five Olympic snow medals come out of Wanaka. What’s stopping five swimming Olympic medals coming from the same town. Wanaka has an indoor pool with water in it and concrete walls 25m apart. The Millennium Institute in Auckland is not New Zealand’s sole source of swimming wisdom and talent.  Peter Snell was born in Opunake, Murray Halberg in Ekatahuna, Lisa Carrington in Whakatane, Valerie Adams in Rotorua, Danyon Loader and Tom Walsh both in Timaru. Lydiard was right, “champions are everywhere. Every street’s got them”.

If implementing the principles of diversification and competition are accepted as the goal, what does it mean for SNZ? Well, it involves traveling the length and breadth of New Zealand every year to do two things – identify and inspire the talented and coach the coaches. Don’t bring them to Auckland – it sends all the wrong messages. Go to their home turf.

One of the most inspiring sporting moments of my teenage years was when Lydiard brought Peter Snell to the Wairoa Athletic Club to run a handicap 800m race. The race was followed by a Lydiard led coaching talk. A year later our Wairoa College cross country team won the Hawkes Bay/Poverty Bay Championship. That win and the visit of Lydiard and Peter Snell were very much related.

Just imagine the shot in the arm a visit by Lauren Boyle or Lewis Clareburt or Erika Fairweather plus their coaches and Gary Francis would be to the Wairoa Swimming Club. Lauren still looks pretty fit. A 100m handicap race against her would have those Wairoa kids buzzing for years. A coaching session explaining American University swimming, distances and speeds would progress swimming beyond measure. The photographs, the medals, the uniforms would leave a lasting legacy. Over a period of years repeating the same thing throughout New Zealand and swimming becomes a better, a far better place.

Imagine the effect on Wanaka and Queenstown of a visit from American coach Mark Schubert. Don’t drag everyone to Auckland. Take Schubert to New Zealand. That is where the swimmers and coaches live. Go find them and look after them. Make them feel important. Why? Because they are.    

And it should not be expensive. Swimmers, parents, and coaches would be pleased to pay a fee for the experience. Who knows? SNZ may even turn a profit.

And the natural arrogant superiority of Aucklanders to the rest of New Zealand needs to stop. I remember a CEO of Auckland Swimming mocking my frequent visits to competitions in the Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay and Counties. “Been to the colonies again, David,” he said. He is the same moron who ridiculed the SNZ logo of “excellence in every pool”. That supercilious conceit has done swimming enormous damage.  

And so, the way ahead is to control the ever-present danger in New Zealand sport of empire building. And instead build an exciting, vibrant, and enthusiastic base. SNZ’s success in the future will be determined by what is happening in Wairoa and Wanaka. When those towns are buzzing, champions will follow. As sure as God made little green apples, from that base will come another Loader, Hurring or Simcic.

SNZ’s future is in how well it tends the dozens of gardens where champions grow.