By David

Paul Newnham recently sent Swimwatch a very interesting comment. This is what he said.

Hi David,
Interesting article above. I’m doing a bunch of SPARC endorsed community coaching courses. The guys from Unitech School of Sport tell us we need to learn to create \Self directed athletes\ much like the farmers etc who once made up the all blacks. According to SPARC we have lost some of the chaotic self directed decision making. We have become boring and predictable resulting in poor international performance. If SPARC already know this how could they possibly endorse a sports organization moving to a boring and predictable management structure away from one that produced the likes of Loader!!

I could not agree more. For years elite swimming in New Zealand has been run like some middle school physical education class. Come to think of it, that’s not so strange. Jan Cameron, the boss of the program, is a middle school teacher by trade. Mind you, she should know better. During the 1960s, I believe she was a very good friend of Arthur Lydiard. Certainly he would have been horrified at the “school mom” tactics she performs with New Zealand’s best swimmers.

The best example is her ban on the consumption of alcohol. Many of New Zealand’s best swimmers are well into their 20s. If they want a glass of wine or a beer with their dinner, what’s the problem? When the competition is over and they want to relax with two or three glasses, isn’t that a good thing. Not according to Jan Cameron it’s not. Her blanket prohibition during a swim meet would see a sip of pastoral wine at Sunday Communion have you placed on report. She really has lost the plot of what all this is about.

Compare her antics with Duncan Laing. In 1992 I went with Duncan to the World Cup Final in Majorca. As the airplane lifted us up over the Tasman Sea on our way to Singapore he saw Toni Jeffs and me pouring a glass of wine with our lunch. He breathed a deep sigh and said, “Thank God for that. Steward! Do you have Speights on this plane?” The meet we were going to was the forerunner of the World Short Course Championships. There were three swimmers on the team and everyone came back with a medal. Toni won a bronze in the 50 freestyle and made the final of the 100 freestyle. An occasional glass of wine didn’t seem to do her any harm.

The really funny thing about Cameron’s rules is they don’t work. It seems like the very presence of this boarding school matron encourages misbehaviour. I’ve coached three swimmers who were members of Cameron led teams – Jeffs, Chellingworth and Copland. On every occasion I arranged for Duncan Laing to be their coach. I wouldn’t let a swimmer of mine anywhere near Jan Cameron. Just check her history. She has a unique capacity to attract misbehaviour. In Yokohama at the Pan Pacific Games there was too much drinking. Every reader of Swimwatch will be well aware of Daniel Bell’s repetitive disregard for Cameron’s rules. She treats swimmers like children and then is shocked when that’s what she gets.

The title of this story is ridiculous because it’s so impossible to imagine Cameron and Meads in the same anything. Mind you, putting Cameron and Loader together is just as bazaar. Therein lies the problem. Winning and Cameron, oil and water – concepts that just don’t mix.

It’s off the subject a bit but Cameron’s inability to communicate anything in writing is stunning, especially for someone in her position and, even worse, for someone who once taught English to Australia’s impressionable youth. The stuff she writes is just rubbish. Take a look at an email she sent out yesterday to New Zealand’s unsuspecting Regions.

Cameron’s first paragraph is a bundle of confusion.

“Over the last year, SPARC has been signaling that they wish to have all parts of their and our performance pathways aligned with the established Podium Pathways as part of our performance strategy.  This time has come. SNZ and SPARC have agreed on a podium pathway, given the statistical information from worldwide analysis over a ten year period.  SPARC has provided and worked with SNZ to develop this pathway so that it is real and achievable and they have agreed to funding in this performance area.”

In half a dozen lines she has offered up “performance pathways”, “Podium Pathways”, “performance strategy”, “podium pathway” (no capitals this time) and a “performance area”. It maybe just me but at the end of it all I have no idea what she’s talking about – especially as the whole thing appears to have taken a “worldwide analysis over a ten year period”. No wonder swimming hasn’t won an Olympic medal in that time. The boss has been busy collating data for this momentous email.

Cameron’s next paragraph adds to the confusion.

“SNZ knows that it also has a responsibility to develop swimmers under this podium umbrella so that they can and will jump up onto this pathway as they mature. As we all know, swimmers develop at different stages.  To this end, SNZ continues to develop and nurture a critical mass of swimmers below this podium pathway with its partners the regions and clubs of New Zealand.  The enjoyment of swimming and the many benefits we all obtain from our sport are greater than just performance and this is a wonderful pathway in itself and one we all believe in.”

Once again Cameron mixes metaphors and words in a jumble of confusion. Are the swimmers from my club competing in the National Championships next week under Cameron’s “podium umbrella” or “jumping up onto this pathway” or perhaps even part of the “critical mass below the podium pathway”? But isn’t her last sentence reassuring? Whether we’re under the umbrella or on the pathway or under the pathway it’s all wonderful and we all believe in it – whatever “it” is.

Do you notice how she desperately fits the “Regions and the Clubs of New Zealand” into the email. That’s straight out Project Vanguard propaganda. Constitutionally the Regions are partners of Swimming New Zealand and the Clubs are partners of the Regions. The Coulter gang, including Cameron, have always chosen to ignore that constitutional reality.

Cameron’s third paragraph continues under the same umbrella, along the same pathway.

This week SPARC delivered its updates on performance as it moves to synchronise levels and pathways for all sports it funds. SNZ has agreed with SPARC to outline these ‘pathways to podium’, demonstrating its incremental steps and support.  Essentially, SNZ carding now aligns with the Pathways to Podiums Strategy supported by SPARC.

The “Pathways to Podium Strategy” and the “pathways to podium” (no capitals) were not mentioned in the list of umbrellas and pathways revealed in the first paragraph. They seem to be important now though and we are assured they are supported by SPARC, so they must be good.

Cameron’s stunning missive concludes.

“There are exciting new proposals for individual Training Enhancement Grants from Swimming New Zealand that will be budget dependent on SPARC funding going forward.  Further details will be announced following SPARC HP Review.”

Bloody hell, just when I thought we’d been through every conceivable umbrella, pathway, strategy and plan, Cameron hits us with “Training Enhancement Grants”. Where did they come from? And finally, what do you think the world did before someone invented the words “going forward”? Being as the alternative isn’t available to us yet, it does seem to be stating the obvious.

I’m a great believer in Meads and Lydiard and Laing. They knew how to win a game. My guess is they’d struggle with this Cameron memorandum, even if it did take ten years of worldwide analysis. But there is hope. Cameron’s last sentence tells us that, “Further details will be announced following SPARC HP Review.” With any sort of luck one of those details will be a change to the signature at the bottom of the page – “Jan Cameron”.