So Bill Sweetenham has saddled up and ridden out of town again. In Bill’s case, his saddle is usually a first class seat and his horse has names like B747 and A380. As he leaves town the interesting thing is the coaching chaos his departure represents. Have a look at this. Here is a list of coaches Swimming New Zealand, High Performance Sport New Zealand and Sport New Zealand have employed to coach a World Short Course Champion called Lauren Boyle.

1. February 2013 Australian Mark Regan
2. March 2013 Spanish National Coach in Spain
3. March 2013 Australian Bill Sweetenham
4. April 2013 Spanish SNZ High Performance Director Luis Villanueva
5. April 2013 Australian Bill Sweetenham – again
6. May 2013 Spanish SNZ High Performance Director Luis Villanueva – again
7. June 2013 (possibly) Englishman David Lyles

In four months Boyle has had seven changes of coach. No one can survive that. Perhaps High Performance Sport New Zealand don’t realise that the number of coaches Lauren Boyle has is not a measure of how well she is coached. The swimmers in the circus they call the Millennium Institute must rapidly be assuming the character of damaged goods. I have said it before but it is worthwhile repeating. The members of any club, anywhere in the world who presented their swimmers with seven coaching changes in four months would immediately dismiss the management committee. But at the Millennium Institute, Peter Miskimmin wanders around New Zealand calling the whole thing a huge success. Pretty soon he’s going to be the only one who believes that’s true.

Well, in order that there is no misunderstanding, and for the record, I think the past four months are a disgrace. When an organization or a coach takes on the job of assisting an athlete, that job carries with it a huge responsibility. Swimmers like Lauren Boyle are expected to swim for twenty five hours or so every week. Their commitment is absolute. Swimming is their life. Pain is their constant companion. Their commitment must be revered.

Here is how I describe the responsibility of a coach in my first book on swimming, “Swim to the Top”.

“So a coach is someone with whom you travel, who is a means of conveying the student or athlete along a rough road to a difficult destination. There is a moral in the dry dust of the dictionary. If we think of coaching as a means of travel, we may perceive more clearly both the importance and the limits of the coach’s role. The coach has indispensable functions: to instruct, to motivate and to inculcate strategy, especially that long-term strategy which no young competitor can know by instinct. The coach should also observe clearly defined limits: not to intrude into the ultimate aloneness of the competitor nor to diminish the essentially individual satisfaction of sporting achievement. The coach’s achievement and satisfaction are equally real, equally valid, but different. The means of travel is not the traveller. I am made uneasy by coaches who speak of “we”, as if athlete and coach were a composite being.”

In the past four months, and in spite of Miskimmin’s outlandish claims, Swimming New Zealand have not measured up to that standard; have not performed their coaching duties; have let down New Zealand’s best swimmers and are in breach of their coaching obligation to a World Short Course Champion. The primary influence determining the standard of an athlete’s performance should be talent and work. Their results should be in their hands, in their control. But for Boyle and the other New Zealand swimmers at the World Championships in Barcelona that will not be the case. The primary issue influencing this New Zealand team will be Miskimmin’s coaching disaster. Responsibility for any performance shortcomings in Barcelona belong firmly in Miskimmin’s home, the AMP Building, 86 Customhouse Quay, Wellington.

Another aspect of Miskimmin’s management is highlighted by the Swimming New Zealand coaching circus. Everyone is a foreigner. From Spain, from Australia, from England – any casual observer would be excused for forming the view that New Zealanders just don’t know how to coach. In fact that is far from the truth. New Zealand’s best swimmers have been coached by New Zealanders. Or at least they were until Miskimmin came along. Hilton Brown coached Moss and Kingsman, Lincoln Hurring coached Gary Hurring, Bret Naylor coached Anna Simcic, Duncan Laing coached Danyon Loader and I coached Toni Jeffs when she won a bronze medal in what was then the World Short Course Championships.

The only way we will put Miskimmin’s immature love for things foreign right is to produce champions away from his Millennium Institute. Changing the future is in our hands. Miskimmin, Baumann, Sweetenham and Villanueva are wrong, but it is up to New Zealand coaches to prove it. We have not done that and we must. At least that’s the thought that happily gets me up at 4.30am every morning.

One final point – why has it taken so long to employ David Lyles? Swimming New Zealand won’t tell us. They never discuss bad news. But I don’t think the delay can possibly be completely explained by events in China. There has to be more to it that the spin coming out of Pelorus House. Their version of events is that Lyles had contractual details to conclude with his Shanghai team. That may be true but it does not explain away two or three months. My guess, and it is only a guess based on arranging for several foreigners to come and work in New Zealand, is that something has gone wrong with his immigration application. I wouldn’t put the house on it, but I’d wager a small amount that Miskimmin has had to go along Lambton Quay to his political bosses and ask for a waiver of some sort for Lyles to be allowed into the country. He will get it of course. Politics is his strong game. But I do wonder – what sort of waiver? The possibilities are a health problem, a family issue or a criminal problem of some sort. My guess is a health problem – only because, in my experience, that’s been the most common cause of a delay. If an immigration matter is postponing Lyles’ arrival it would be better for Swimming New Zealand to let its members know what it is. Otherwise our imaginations run riot. What have Immigration found? Should we be concerned?

PS – Dear Mr. Miskimmin,

Now that you have taken over responsibility for the performance of Swimming New Zealand could you please instruct your underlings to put the flyer and qualifying times for the 2013 Short Course Nationals on their website? A little less time spent on the North Shore of Auckland and a little more attention to the rest of us would go a long way. Many young New Zealanders want to know what they have to do to swim in Wellington. It would be a step forward if you could tell them.