I will write this post in the order that the results occurred. But before I do that, why have we arrived back at the point where no one can believe a word posted on the Swimming New Zealand website? In their first report of the swimming the website tells us the New Zealand team “got off to a quality start”. But there were no semi-finalists, no finalists, no National Records and no personal bests. By what measure was that a quality start? The website also told us that the men’s 4×100 freestyle relay place 15th in the heats. The team was actually 14th. The next day the SNZ website said this:

“The 21-year-old secured his first world championships final with a 53.76s effort in the semifinal to be eighth fastest of nine swimmers into the final.”

Every ten year old knows there are only eight swimmers in an international final – but not Swimming New Zealand it seems.

And so to the results.   

10 Kilometer Open Water Swim – Charlotte Webby

Webby placed 40th in 2:08.41.4. The time is not bad. Although time comparisons in open water do not mean a lot 2:08 does compare well with Webby’s recent Taupo 10 kilometer times. Her best in Taupo was in 2016 when she swam 2:09.30. The problem for New Zealand open water swimming is that world standards are progressing very quickly. Webby was eight and a half minutes behind the winner. By the time Tokyo comes along I would not be surprised to see the winner of the women’s event finish in well under two hours. New Zealand has a lot of catching up to do. Right now the open water world is leaving us behind.  

5 Kilometer Open Water Swim – Charlotte Webby

Webby placed 38th in 1:02.07.6. The 5 kilometer race told a similar story to the 10 kilometer result. The winner was 3 minutes ahead. When women’s marathon running was first introduced into the Olympic Games the world’s best performance improved by 20 minutes in just ten years. It appears similar progress is being made today by the women involved in open water swimming. New Zealand Swimming needs to take steps to ensure the sport in New Zealand keeps up. The event is no longer a home for average pool swimmers who do a lot of training. Open water swims will increasingly be won by Lauren Boyle types; fast pool swimmers of real class.    

Men’s 50m Freestyle PERRY Sam

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
49	22.93	22.47	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 50m Freestyle HUNTER Daniel

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
38	22.71	22.31	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 100m Freestyle PERRY Sam

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
51	50.14	49.48	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 200m Freestyle STANLEY Matthew

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
29	1:48.02	1:47.37	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 50m Backstroke HUNTER Daniel

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
37	26.02	25.87	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 100m Backstroke MAIN Corey

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
9	53.97	53.99	Personal best and qualified for semi-final.

 

Semi-Final Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
8	53.76	53.97	Personal best and qualified for final.

 

Final Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
8	53.87	53.76	Not a PB.

 

Men’s 200m Backstroke MAIN Corey

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
16	1:58.34	1:57.51	Not a PB. Qualified for semi-final

 

Semi-Final Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
16	2:01.00	1:57.51	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 200m Butterfly ASHBY Bradlee

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
29	2:00.53	2:00.19	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 200m Individual Medley ASHBY Bradlee

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
15	2:00.20	1:59.54	Not a PB. Qualified for semi-final

 

Semi-Final Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
13	1:59.24	1:59.54	Personal best, NZ Record, did not progress

 

Men’s 400m Individual Medley ASHBY Bradlee

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
23	4:20.65	4:18.68	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 50m Freestyle FA’AMAUSILI Gabi

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
24	25.38	25.02	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 100m Freestyle FA’AMAUSILI Gabi

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
35	56.60	55.89	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 800m Freestyle ROBINSON Emma

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
22	8:44.87	8:31.27	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 1500m Freestyle ROBINSON Emma

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
11	16:25.78	16:30.16	Personal best but did not progress

 

Women’s 50m Backstroke FA’AMAUSILI Gabi

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
23	28.47	27.97	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 100m Backstroke FA’AMAUSILI Gabi

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
26	1:01.80	1:00.83	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 200m Backstroke GICHARD Bobbi

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
24	2:15.97	2:11.93	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 100m Breaststroke LLOYD Natasha

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
29	1:10.11	1:09.53	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 200m Breaststroke LLOYD Natasha

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
25	2:33.93	2:29.73	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 50m Butterfly GASSON Helena

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
35	27.37	26.45	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 200m Butterfly GASSON Helena

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
27	2:13.71	2:09.84	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 200m Individual Medley GASSON Helena

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
21	2:13.91	2:13.14	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 400m Individual Medley GASSON Helena

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	Personal Best	Comment
23	4:49.35	4:45.32	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Men’s 4×100 Freestyle Relay

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	NZ Record	Comment
14	3:17.74	3:15.41	Not a PB and did not progress

 

Women’s 4×100 Medley Relay

Preliminary Place	Time Swum	NZ Record	Comment
12	4:07.09	4:06.30	Not a PB and did not progress

 

SNZ BOARD – TIME TO RESIGN

The performance has been disappointing: worse than the previous three World Championships. The following table shows a comparison of this Championship with the previous three.

	2017	2015	2013	2011
Number of Swimmers on Team	11	8	14	12
Number of Gold Medals	0	0	0	0
Number of Silver Medals	0	2	0	0
Number of Bronze Medals	0	0	3	0
Number of Finals	1	2	6	4
Number of Semi-Finals	2	1	5	5
Average Place over all team members	26	23	19	19
NZ Position on Medal table	Nil	20	27	Nil

No gold, no silver, no bronze, one swim in the finals, two swims in semi-finals, not appearing on the medal table and an average place in their events of 26th – down 3 places from two years ago and 7 places from four years ago. A train wreck by any measure.

Another way of looking at this fiasco is the number and percentage of personal bests. The table below gives the numbers. A PB percentage of 14% is not good enough. A club coach would rightly have serious committee problems with that performance record. An international coach should pack his or her stopwatch and white board marker and head through the Waterview Tunnel bound for Auckland Airport.  

Item	Number	%
Number of Swims	29	100
Slower than PB swims	25	86
PB swims	4	14

The conclusion is stark. New Zealand swimming is bad and is getting worse. The sport is bankrupt. For twenty years swimming has received and spent over a million dollars a year. Twenty million tax payer dollars and the end product is a sport devoid of hope, lost in a world they do not understand. Ironically the one finalist, Corey Main lives and trains in Florida. He has almost no contact with the policies of Swimming New Zealand. Quite simply the New Zealand performance is not good enough – not by a country mile.

So, who is to blame? Well it is certainly not the swimmers. New Zealand has the talent. The country’s juniors perform well in international competition. It is not money. There has been plenty of money. But when Swimming New Zealand gets involved the whole thing falls to bits. Swimwatch has long argued that the policy followed by the Swimming New Zealand Board is fatally flawed. The problem is one of policy. Therefore the Board of Swimming New Zealand is responsible for this mess. The fault is theirs. The buck stops with them. They are to blame.

They should resign. Here are their names – Bruce Cotterill (Chairman), Geoff Brown, Margaret McKee, Nick Tongue, Anna Tootill and Simon Perry. They have had their chance. They have done their best and it has not worked. By any commercial standard it is time for them to step aside. Common commercial decency demands that they accept their collective responsibility for the organization’s poor performance. The sacrifice of generations of young New Zealand swimmers is their legacy. It is time for the Board to go.

It is time that a new policy and new ideas were allowed to take over. There is another way. There is a better plan. There is an alternative that offers a better path and will produce a better result. That alternative deserves to be given an opportunity to guide the fortunes of New Zealand swimming. A new way cannot do worse and will provide the sport with a much better future where swimmers win international swimming races again.  

What the new policy should be has long been discussed in Swimwatch. It is a policy direction that has also been suggested by writings I have seen by Clive Power and other senior New Zealand coaches. This is not the place to discuss those details but they do exist. It is their time.

The moral of Budapest is – clear the decks; get rid of the old guard and give some fresh ideas room to grow.

But instead of doing the decent and correct thing the American Head Coach will be blamed and a “world-wide search” for yet another Head Coach will begin. The current coach should of course come in for his share of the blame. That altitude trip to Arizona was a real rookie mistake and cost the swimmers involved dearly. But the real responsibility lies with those who gave the coach an impossible brief. And that was done by the Board. Each member has a duty to resign now.