By David

I hear the Wellington Winter Swimming Championships are being held this weekend. And guess what? They are starting each race from the shallow end of the pool. That’s the end that does not meet the FINA minimum depth standard. That’s the end FINA told Swimming New Zealand should not be used. That’s the end several of my swimmers have grazed and bumped knees and toes diving into. That’s the end a young Raumati swimmer lost her teeth diving into its dangerous water.

Isn’t it just too bloody incredible for words? Wellington administrators go into committee to discuss their plans to close this blog and at the same time approve the use of a really dangerous swimming pool. Mark Berge and Sam Rossiter-Stead should be ashamed. They let their names go forward as potential administrators of the year and at the same time sit on a Board that approves the use of a substandard swimming pool. I’d just love to hear them defend that position in a court of law.

But the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre is illegal for more than its depth. Today I filed a protest with Swimming Auckland asking them to submit my protest to the organisers of the New Zealand Winter Championships. Before I copy the protest, so that you can read it for yourself, let me tell you of another Swimming New Zealand, and possibly Auckland Swimming decision that marks this as another bad day for the sport of swimming. I was told by the Swimming Auckland CEO that I could submit my protest but Swimming New Zealand had increased the fee from $NZ50 to Swiss Francs 100, that’s $NZ160. I am a bit suspicious about the increase. I spoke to three prominent administrators and this was the first they had ever heard of the 220% increase in the cost of a New Zealand protest.

I do hope the increase is not aimed specifically at David Wright. If it is SNZ will have a legal dispute on their hands. And if it is an across the board legitimate increase what a ridiculous amount to ask struggling parents to pay who have kids who love swimming but who want to question an unfair or incorrect decision. Talk about user friendly. I guess someone has to pay for the Mazdas. I told our senior swimmer today about the increase. One wag commented, “Seems like there is one thing Olympian about the performance of Swimming New Zealand – the fee they charge us for asking a question.”

Anyway here is my protest. Your comments for and against are most welcome.

FACILITIES PROTEST 2014

NEW ZEALAND SHORT COURSE CHAMPIONSHIPS

Protest

This protest has been prepared by West Auckland Aquatics with a request that it be submitted by the Auckland Team Manager to those running the 2014 New Zealand Short Course Nationals. The protest reflects our concern that swimmers are:

1. Competing in a pool that does not comply with FINA Facility Rules FR1.3 and FR2.11. Rule FR2.11 says, “During competition the water in the pool must be kept at a constant level with no appreciable movement. In order to observe health regulations in force in most countries, inflow and outflow is permissible as long as no appreciable current or turbulence is created.” Compelling evidence exists to show an “appreciable current” is present in the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre.
2. The performance of swimmers competing in the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre will be adversely affected (possibly by an average of three seconds per 200 meters) compared to swimmers competing in a complying pool such as West Wave in Auckland.
3. Expecting swimmers to qualify for international events, such as the World SC Championships, in a non-complying pool where a discernable current is present is unfair and discriminatory.

Procedure

This protest had its origin in the 2013 New Zealand Short Course Nationals when West Auckland noted that the club’s swimmers were consistently swimming slower in one direction compared to the other direction. The club noted that the variation in speed affected all swimmers from those who did not make it past the heats, to finalists and in one case a Championship winner.

Further investigation revealed another anomaly. The club’s best breaststroke swimmer and national short course champion was required to take an extra stroke to complete every second length. Over 200m her reliable 8 stokes per 25m race plan was 8/9/8/9. In the woman’s 200 freestyle the race plan of another West Auckland swimmer was also upset. Her normal 16 strokes per 25m race plan became 16/17/16/17. Both swimmers just could not reach the end of each second length in their normal number of strokes.

Clearly there was an abnormality. Could it possibly be that a current was present?

To test this, the West Auckland Aquatics coach, during the lunch break, put an empty plastic bottle in the pool and watched it float quickly down the length of the short course pool. Most certainly there was an “appreciable current”.

However the effect of a possible current on a plastic bottle and West Auckland Aquatic swimmers, although persuasive on its own, was not sufficient evidence on which to base a formal facility protest. Was there an effect on swimmers other than those who swam for West Auckland Aquatics?

To test this we selected, at random, seven events at distances of 200 and 400 meters. We analysed the performance of the winners of each of these events. We chose to examine the performance of the winners of each of the seven events because we believed these stronger swimmers should be least affected by any current and they could also be best expected to swim even lap times.

If their swimming was affected the current must be considered “appreciable”.

In all cases we did not include the first length in our evaluation as the time swum was affected by the dive start.

The table below shows the product of our analysis. The following points summarize these findings.

1. In every event, male and female, there is a consistent variation between the times taken to swim in one direction compared to the other direction.
2. It is reasonable to expect that “flat” strokes (breaststroke and butterfly) will be more affected by swimming into a current. This is confirmed by the data where the variation between the “into current” and “with current” lengths in these strokes is an average of 0.84 seconds per length.
3. Rotating strokes (backstroke and freestyle) show a significant but lower variation of 0.67 seconds per length.
4. The average variation over all events between the “into current” and “with current” lengths is 0.74 seconds per 25m length. What that means is that on average New Zealand’s best swimmers consistently took 0.74 of a second longer to swim one way in the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre than in the other direction. By any standard that meets the definition of “appreciable”; appreciable in terms of variation and its only explanation – a current.       

Conclusion

This protest is filed with a request that:

1. The Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre be ruled in violation of FINA rule FR2.11 and as such is a non-complying facility.
2. We do not expect or ask that the 2014 SC National Championships be shifted as a result of this ruling.
3. We do ask that the Wellington City Council and Swimming Wellington undertake the remedial work required for the pool to meet FINA rules.
4. We also ask that if the remedial work is not undertaken then, as a result of this protest, the 2015 Championships will be shifted to a complying facility.

The protest fee of $50 will be paid to Swimming Auckland during the Auckland Winter Championships.

David Wright

Coach – West Auckland Aquatics

26 July 2014

Reference: Analysis of recent swim performances at the 2013 FINA World Championship: Initial confirmation of the rumoured ‘current’

Joel M. Stager, Andrew Cornett, Chris Brammer, Counsilman Center, Dept. Kinesiology, Indiana University, School of Health Promotion and Human Performance, Eastern Michigan University

By David

I was reminded of this traditional Spanish saying when I read an article by Nik Simon in this morning’s New Zealand Herald. The Spanish phrase means, “Advice I sell and for myself have none.” It is intended as a reproach for the person who has advice for everyone except for themselves. Also, some people would do well by heeding the excellent advice they so generously extend to others. Swimming New Zealand employ a Spanish High Performance Director (even the title is a bit of a joke these days), Luis Villanueva, who would do well to heed this guidance from his homeland.

Nik Simon’s article begins with the headline “Commonwealth Games: Improve or pay price, warns swim boss.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, the article goes on to describe Villanueva’s position as follows.

There was no beating around the bush from Luis Villanueva as he reflected on the campaign in Glasgow; New Zealand’s swimmers had not been good enough.

Out of the 16-strong squad picked for these Commonwealth Games, only Lauren Boyle and Sophie Pascoe finished among the medals. Just once since Brisbane in 1982 had New Zealand’s men failed to pick up a single piece of silverware.

Villanueva may carry a harmless persona, but the high-performance director warned his swimmers to improve their performance or pay the price. There will be one last chance to impress at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships next month, before the Spaniard carries out a comprehensive two-year review.

“The team hasn’t performed as well as I expected,” said Villanueva. “It’s not about the medals, it’s about seeing progression. It’s not the point to make the team at the trials, then not improve the performance over the next 15 weeks. Some of the guys have seized their opportunity here, but the ones that haven’t need to step up in three weeks time.

What a contrast; what a turnaround from the lavish praise we heard from Villanueva prior to the Games. For example – when the swim team was announced.

Swimming New Zealand High Performance Director, Luis Villanueva said the swimmers who have earned selection have produced a standard to be competitive in Glasgow.

“We look to develop swimmers who can compete at the highest levels on the world stage,” Villanueva said. “The team is built around the nucleus of swimmers who went to the world championships last year and with further hard work in the next 14 weeks I believe they all have the capability of being contenders for medals in Glasgow.

The link is to a Google cache of the press release, as the Swimming New Zealand website appears to be going through a re-design and all of its old URLs are currently broken.

In the days before the swimming began Villanueva told Radio Sport.

“The three of them (Lauren, Glen, Matt) can be really high on every event they swim. I expect them to perform better than they did in trials. If they do this I’m pretty sure they will be in medals in some events. I’m pretty sure they are going to swim well here.”

And it was all a pipe dream.

With the exception of Lauren Boyle and Corey Main every swimmer on the Glasgow team and every relay team failed to swim a personal best time. When that happens blaming the swimmers is sad, cowardly, pathetic and wrong. When that happens, the bureaucrats and coaches guiding the team have screwed up – screwed up big time. One or two bad swims may well be the athletes fault. But when a whole team fails to fire, in my view, that failure is the responsibility of those in charge. And at the new 2014 Swimming New Zealand that’s Miskimmin, Renford, Layton, Lyles and you Luis Villanueva.

How dare they try and shift the blame for the Glasgow disaster on to the swimmers. Have the guys who run Swimming New Zealand no shame? Don’t they understand that our country gave them all the money they needed, gave them our best young talent, gave them pools, gyms, medical staff and state of the art video analysis equipment. And still they failed. No one will ever convince me that with the same resources and the same attention New Zealand club coaches from Invercargill to Whangarei could not have done better than Miskimmin’s Antares Place Mazda set.

The shame of it is SNZ appear incapable of admitting fault. At least if they manned up and acknowledged their shortcomings, their failure and their inability to prepare an international swim team they could leave the sport and the country with their integrity intact. As it is they will eventually depart as failures – failures with dishonour.

We included the bold text about how the swimmers were not to blame in Glasgow before we even saw Villanueva’s comments, blaming them. That was a really, really low – as low as anything I have seen from that lot. They have been told for years that they are breeding young people who won’t hack it, then when they don’t hack it in the exact manner Swimwatch and others stated, they blame the swimmers in the press. I don’t get how these guys get away with it.

Some readers may have missed this opinion piece on the Stuff website. It seems that the mainstream media are beginning to accept the Swimwatch position. This is a summarized version of what was said.

OPINION: Nearly nine million dollars spent in four years and two medals to show for it. That’s the meagre return on investment for Swimming New Zealand following a lean Commonwealth Games display that would have been disastrous if not for Lauren Boyle.

New Zealand’s four-medal haul in the pool harked back to similar low returns from the 1998 and 2002 Games. This country hasn’t won an Olympic swimming medal since Danyon Loader won two gold at Atlanta 1996, and only the most optimistic fan would predict that drought will be broken in Rio.

Swimming is one of 13 ‘targeted sports’ for High Performance Sport New Zealand, the organisation entrusted with distributing taxpayer-backed funding. Targeted sports are those identified as having ”the best opportunity for success at Olympic Games, and World Championships”. From 2011 through to the end of this year, HPSNZ have given swimming $8,651,674 – including $2,020,544 this year.

Yet Boyle’s 400m gold and 800m silver in Glasgow are the only concrete returns on money spent on Swimming NZ. Swimming has in recent years undergone a whole-of-sport review and the organisation has battled through multiple coaching changes and dysfunctional governance. But until Boyle can be joined at elite level by more of the squad, a harsh spotlight will remain focused on a sport failing to make a splash on the world stage.

Dysfunctional governance – well that’s still in place. And the chance of swimmers joining Boyle will only happen if the sport’s regional administrators can extract the sport from this centralisation mess and provide it with a strong, diversified federal region and club based structure.