During the seven years I spent coaching in the United States there were a number of disruptive parents. One of the worst was a Florida mother called Julie Reiser. She was incredible; the gold standard when it came to causing trouble.  

With that history imagine how I felt when I read the following headline in the May 19 2014 Boca News – “Made In USA Founder, Reiser Jailed.” Evidently Reiser had fallen out with and had left her husband. She visited the family home while he was out and removed two bags of his belongings and took them to her car. Then, according to the report, Reiser “came back into the house and took a 12-pack of Michelob beer” that she broke and poured over her ex-husband’s possessions in the driveway. Afterwards, the report said, Reiser was found by police in Boca Raton, Florida and turned over to cops in Delray Beach.

That has to be karma or as a committee member from the Florida club said to me in an email on the subject – “Four greatest words in the English language:  I told you so.”

Well we have just experienced another one of those moments. In a recent Swimwatch post we commented on the Swimming New Zealand’s high altitude training junket to a mountain in Arizona. This is how Swimming New Zealand announced the event.  

“The team of 7 guys and 9 gals with support staff of Jerry Olszewski, Mat Woofe, HPSNZ S&C Specialist Stephen Hill-Haas and Team Manager Susie Prince will today head home from the 3 week long training camp at the Flagstaff Altitude camp after competing in the USA Pro Series events in Mesa and the Mission Viejo Swim meet of Champions over the last few days. Watch the FB page for some updates on PB’s!”

We analysed the results and discovered that in the Mission Viejo meet of Champions the New Zealand team swam in 64 races. The team had 4 personal best swims; Gasson in the 400 IM, Ashby in the 400 freestyle and McIntosh and Deans in the 1500. Four swims from 64 races is a personal best ratio of 6%. That is pretty ugly especially when all four PBs by the New Zealand swimmers were in the swimmers’ off-events

We went on to comment that “no doubt Jerry and Suzie (coach and manager and Arizona natives) will say the team was in the middle of hard training and so PBs were never expected. They had just been to the Arizona mountain. They had experienced travel delays. Trump protesters were rioting outside the team hotel. The hamburgers had caused sickness. Blaa, blaa, blaa. Coaches have an endless list of excuses to explain a 6% PB result.

Finally last week the Swimming New Zealand website reported on the trip. Here are some extracts from their report.  

“Some of the USA’s top swimmers, such as Katie Ledecky, Nathan Adrian and Simone manual were amongst the athletes competing at the meet.”

It is as sad as all can be that Swimming New Zealand cannot get out of gee-whiz mode. When Katie Ledecky is telling her coach she got to swim in the same meet as the New Zealand team then we can be impressed. Until then advertising the coup of being allowed to enter a meet that included these swimmers hardly seems like the attitude of champions I’ve ever met. We are so wonderfully naïve.   

And then Swimming New Zealand treated us to the stunning news that at the training camp everybody completed the training “admirably” and:

“A highlight of their trip included a visit to the Grand Canyon on their afternoon off.”

I have absolutely no problem with visiting the Grand Canyon. Indeed on swimming trips I have been to the Eiffel Tower, visited Red Square, sailed around Monaco Harbour, been into the not-yet-finished Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, visited Osama Bin Laden’s home in Jeddah, sunbathed on a Caribbean Beach and timed swimmers in the snow at an outdoor pool in Malmo. But I would never describe these events as the highlights – that’s such a tourist thing to do. The highlight is what Swimming New Zealand exactly mean by “training admirably”.

And then comes the bit that did interest me. After waiting for a week, how was Swimming New Zealand’s going to spin their “updates on PB’s!”? This is their report.

“The competition was hosted by the Storied Club Mission Veijo (sic) Nandadores. The whole team swam well after an intense 11 days of training and made several finals with multiple athletes winning titles.”

Here again we are subject to this insufferable “famous by association” naivety. Mission Viejo is certainly a stunningly famous club. In the 1984 Olympic Games club members won 13 medals; 10 of them gold. I just think the constant breathless reminder that we swam in the same pool as Katie Ledecky, had a highlight visiting the Grand Canyon and wow, got to swim in the Mission Viejo pool is elementary school nice but not the way seasoned professional athletes go about their trade.

And then, of course we come to the four PBs. Well we don’t actually because the closest Swimming New Zealand get to telling us about PBs is to say “The whole team swam well after an intense 11 days of training”.

Remember what we said a week ago, “no doubt Jerry and Suzie (coach and manager and Arizona natives) will say the team was in the middle of hard training and so PBs were never expected. They had just been to the Arizona mountain.”

You have to admit “after an intense 11 days of training” is pretty close to what we predicted. Or as the committee member from the Florida club said to me in an email on the subject – “Four greatest words in the English language:  I told you so.”

As an aside, “Simone manual” is actually Simone Manuel. People’s names normally begin with capitals; “manual” means by hand or physical. Her name is Manuel. And while we are on the subject of capitals, adjectives don’t normally need one. The “Storied Club Mission Veijo Nandadores”, spelled correctly, would have been perfectly well described as the “storied club, Mission Viejo Nandadores”.