By David

The conclusion of many New Zealand National Championships in the Cameron and Renford eras has left me trying to determine whether it is possible to question the standard of New Zealand swimming without unfairly undermining the progress and effort of individual athletes. Is it possible to be fair and honest? Can a valid point be made without being branded a grumpy old bugger?

Take the most recent Championships just concluded in Auckland. Take the last event swum at the Championships; a 4×100 metre freestyle relay time trial involving one team of the country’s four best female freestyle swimmers. The purpose behind the event was to see whether the team could swim faster than the Glasgow Commonwealth Game’s qualifying time and in the process break the national 4×100 relay record. The four swimmers did both. Their time of 3:41.50 was a second inside the qualifying mark for Glasgow and faster than the old national record of 3:43.49.

That seems pretty good, doesn’t it? Certainly the Otago Daily Times thinks so; calling the swim “a fairytale finish to the New Zealand championships”. Swimming New Zealand’s website went one step further describing the swim as “a massive climax to the championships”. As the relay time appeared on the results screen, David Lyles, the Peter Miskimmin swim school coach, repeatedly punched the air in a display that would have put Mohammed Ali to shame. Sky TV reporter, Ian Jones, must have been in danger of wetting his pants such was his level of breathless excitement. The poolside commentator could well have set off alarms in the Sydney noise control agency as his screams told us the relay time was the second or third fastest in the world this year.

And the swim was a good result. And I want to stress that point unreservedly. No comment made in this report should be taken as any criticism of the swimmer’s effort. They did just splendid. But was the swim as good as the SNZ hype? Was the reaction of Swimming New Zealand’s gofers fair and balanced? Was it good for the sport? Or was it another example of Miskimmin’s minions overplaying their success; spinning a story; desperate to justify the Mazdas? Did it, as Luis Villanueva from Swimming New Zealand has said move us close to developing “swimmers who can compete at the highest levels on the world stage”? I don’t think so.

Without downplaying the performance of the relay team in any way, I do not think the swim justifies the hype created by Swimming New Zealand and Sky TV. Consider these facts.

1. The New Zealand time is a huge 9.78 seconds behind the 3:31.72 world record. At the speed they are swimming that’s about 18.5 meters, a third of the pool, behind. That’s not even close. Usain Bolt can run 100 meters in the time the New Zealand team was behind the world’s better swimmers.
2. A time similar to the 2014 New Zealand time for this event was first swum by a German relay team on August 21 1984. The current New Zealand time is twenty years behind the world.
3. 2014 is only four months old. In that time the Northern Hemisphere has been locked into its winter short course swimming. FINA only lists the event being swum three times and two of those are at an interclub meet in Orlando, Florida. Instead of telling us the New Zealand time is second in the world this year it may have been more balanced to say that the New Zealand time would have been 12^th in 2013, 15^th in 2012 and 12^th in 2011.

I guess Swimming New Zealand can’t tell the truth. Eighteen and a half meters behind, in twelfth place hardly justifies $150,000 high altitude training camps and a parking lot full of Mazda SUVs. And that’s why SNZ has always spun the truth. What that team did was good enough without spinning it into a world leading swim.

Besides which, why is it that we all need to have relay names into meet control by 6.30pm on the night of the event and Swimming New Zealand didn’t hand their names in for this race until 7.37pm. Anyone else would be disqualified. Only a month ago West Auckland Aquatics was prevented from making a change to their relay for a five minute time infraction.

At the Open Nationals, SNZ’s late list of names also altered the names of one of the teams in an earlier event; another disqualification offense. Why do officials like Ross Bragg and Joe Davidson, who are responsible for policing the rules, let Miskimmin’s SNZ mob get away with that corrupt behavior? In a well-run sport the rule of law should apply to us all. The stuff surrounding this relay is back to the worst of the Cameron days. Swimming New Zealand learn nothing if Bragg and Davidson let them get away with this stuff.

Much has been made by Swimming New Zealand about the team selected for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. But perhaps things are no what they seem. Ignoring relays and para swimmers only four swimmers qualified to swim in individual events at the Commonwealth Games; Lauren Boyle, Corey Main, Matthew Stanley and Glenn Snyders. Two of those swimmers no longer have anything to do with the Miskimmin swim school. Corey Main is swimming at the University of Florida and Glenn Snyders trains with Dave Salo in Los Angeles. So what have we left? Miskimmin’s 1.6 million dollar budget, a $150,000 high altitude training camp, around the world junkets and coaches and administrators with generous salaries and flash Mazda SUVs bought New Zealand two individual event swimmers to the Glasgow Games. And, of more concern, for all their high altitude training, the two swimmers could only come up with one personal best time; Lauren Boyle’s 1:57.67 in the 200 meters freestyle; not really her main event. That’s $1,600,000 spent to purchase one “off-event” PB and near enough $1,000,000 of your money and mine, per qualifying swimmer. Well done Miskimmin. Looks like your swim school really works.

It is worth mentioning the Sky TV coverage of the Trials. It was a huge coup to have the event broadcast live; even if it did come across as a SNZ infomercial. I was however annoyed at Mark Bone’s commentary. Even John McBeth, with good cause, came across as concerned and embarrassed.

Of course Bone is entitled to his opinions. However he ripped into one of my swimmers who won a bronze medal in the 1500 woman’s freestyle. He called her stroke inefficient and likely to cause injury. Bone has always been a pretty political animal. Normally he treads very cautiously around any overt criticism. But not this time. I guess he felt safe tearing into one of my swimmers. After all Swimming New Zealand would love it. David Wright’s swimmers make for the sort of easy prey preferred by opportunist sycophants.

Well, Mark Bone let me tell you my swimmer has swum 9235 kilometers in the past three years without the slightest indication of any shoulder injury. In fact, she suffered from injury as a younger swimmer with other coaches, but has never once been injured or in danger of injury since swimming with me. She is an Open National’s bronze medalist, six times Open and Winter Championship finalist and three times World Cup finalist for her country and can do without you ripping her stroke to bits just because, I suspect, she trains with David Wright.

Her effort and application deserve better than your cowardly attention. In fact, your brother was a provincial administrator who did nothing while my daughter was treated disgracefully in Hawkes Bay because of her father’s outspoken views – treatment he knew about but has never apologised to her for, despite knowing how devastating it was. And now, it seems, you demonstrate the same level and type of suspect behavior. In this instance, I felt that the expression of your views diminished your reputation and your character.

As I say, valid point or grumpy old bugger? It’s probably a bit of both.