During the weekend two stories were posted on Swimwatch that merit further discussion. Let’s deal with the best bits first. There is a swimmer called Paige Schendelaar-Kemp. She is 19 and swims for the Howick Pakuranga Club. She was recruited a year ago and swam at Florida State University. Her coach was the master’s world record holder, Ozzie Quevedo. I was interested in her progress. When I lived in Florida I coached Ozzie for a couple of years.

Anyway, Paige has returned to New Zealand and was swimming in the Auckland Open Championships this weekend. Let me tell you what happened. On Friday night she swam the 50 freestyle. She ended up seventh in a relatively modest time of 28.44. However I was impressed. I said at the time, she may have only placed seventh but was clearly the best swimmer in the pool.

On Saturday she swam the 200 freestyle in another modest time of 2:15.34. Her swim seemed to confirm the impression of a huge talent, struggling to find her best form. On Sunday her 100 freestyle heat swim was 1:01.41. Again she looked like the best swimmer in the pool but lacked the fitness to prove it. And then, in the final, her true class could not be hidden any longer. She went into the race ranked fourth, turned in second, in the same time as she had swum in the 50 on Friday, and won the race down the second 50 meters. Her time was 59.08. I have never seen raw talent like that since the days of Toni Jeffs and Rhi Jeffrey. Some people are born to do this swimming business better than others. Paige seems to be one of those. Oh, I know there are dozens of faster swimmers than 59.08 but that is not the point. It takes real class to tear a field apart in the way Paige went about her work. It was professional. It was tough. It was swimming, maybe not at its fastest, but certainly at its best. It was a privilege to sit and watch. So thank you Paige. I do hope your career continues to prosper. A talent like yours deserves to succeed. Besides I want to enjoy watching a few more second 50s like the one you swam last night.

The greatest irony of the weekend came in the form of a report that, ex Cycling New Zealand Head Sprint Coach, Anthony Peden has accepted a position as Head Sprint Coach for the Chinese national team. All I could think was, “Miskimmin does it again.” Remember when Miskimmin built his Cambridge cycling palace. The Head Coach then, Justin Grace, wasn’t good enough for the Miskimmin Empire so he was dropped. France and then the UK snapped him up and a couple of years later British Cycling went home from the Rio Olympics with a bucket full of medals coached by Miskimmin’s cast-off. And now the hugely successful Peden hasn’t been gone for a week and already he has a job with the Chinese. If I was a young, talented New Zealand cyclist, would I prefer Grace, Peden or Miskimmin to be available in New Zealand? Miskimmin’s going to come third in that race. I just wish it was Miskimmin, and not Peden, on his way to Beijing. I’d go to the airport to watch that flight leave. The facts seem to scream the obvious. How come everyone can make these good coaches work well except for Peter Miskimmin?

A senior Auckland coach did question the validity of the Swimwatch story on the quality of the Friday evening session of the Auckland Championships. I was told there were good reasons for most of the items mentioned. I’m sure that’s right. However good excuses fail to erase the overall impression of a poorly attended meet, poorly managed. As I said to the coach, a person whose ability I respect enormously, if the performance of their swim school had declined by half of the change in the Auckland Championships they would have been out of business years ago. Individual items can be debated late into the night. The impression of general decay is hard to escape. As I was being dropped off on Saturday Alison said to me, “Where are all the cars? Remember when there was not a spare parking space anywhere during the Auckland Championships?” She was right. Now there is enough room to hold the Monaco Grand Prix in the vacant car park. It would be interesting to know the number of national open records broken during the weekend – or even Auckland open records. My guess is none. It seems that quality and quantity are falling together. And good reasons cannot excuse that away.

And finally Paul Kent tells me he has not been “won over to the well-behaved side”. He still has his rebellious moments. I’m delighted to hear that good news. The thought of an angelic Paul singing in a celestial choir was beginning to keep me awake at night. The idea of him poking Ross Bragg with his Devil’s pitchfork is much more comforting.

Former Solicitor General Michael Heron has been appointed to lead a review into actions of both HPSNZ and Cycling NZ (CNZ) after the departure of head sprint coach Anthony Peden. Being a retired Solicitor General I’m sure Heron’s IQ is going to be equal to the task. I just hope he has enough perspicacity to identify a common factor that links the problems in these sports organizations.

You see the difficulty is that because Heron’s terms of reference are to look at internal troubles in CNZ he will miss the actual cause of the sport’s current problems. Why? Because the cause is not inside cycling. The cause is in the environment and the policy that established the sport in Cambridge. This is not about Peden. This is about the toxic environment and policy imposed on the sport by an obsessed Peter Miskimmin at Sport NZ. And how do I know that is true?

Because since Miskimmin began his drive to centralise the administration and operations of New Zealand sports, disruption, chaos and reviews have characterised them all. The common factor is Miskimmin’s policy.

It began with swimming. Miskimmin ordered three expensive reviews; all in very similar circumstances to this latest cycling version. The Sweetenham Review was first followed by the Ineson Review and most recently the Moller Review. Millions were spent getting the conclusion Miskimmin wanted. When the first two did not produce a result that pleased Miskimmin he ordered another review until Moller finally delivered the “right” answers. Miskimmin’s centralised policy was locked in place. And we have seen the result. New Zealand swimming could not beat a well-worn carpet. Membership numbers have collapsed, income is fading and international results are terrible. All those reviews and the sport has no direction or purpose. Miskimmin has reviewed it into oblivion.

Rowing, canoeing and cycling have all had their reviews. They are also all centralised sports. If Michael Heron misses that link he will miss the fundamental cause of the dysfunction that haunts sports forced into Miskimmin’s centralised model.

Miskimmin has been very good at shifting attention away from his policy and onto those charged with making the impossible possible. When the Moller Review was in full swing, I went to Wellington to present a paper on why centralised training would not work. During the course of my discussion with Moller he made it very clear that debating the validity of Miskimmin’s centralised policy was not to be discussed. Debating what SNZ needed to change in order to make the policy work was fine. The legitimacy of the policy however was out of bounds. As a result the fundamental cause of the malaise that infects swimming has never been addressed. Miskimmin won’t allow it to be addressed.

And exactly the same controls and restrictions are going to blight the Heron Cycling Review.       Under the terms of reference for the review Heron will investigate the allegations of inappropriate behavior in the CNZ high performance program and assess whether the national body’s response was “adequate and appropriate”. The review will also “identify, in detail, the information received and steps taken by HPSNZ” in the debrief of the 2016 Olympic campaign, and whether a breach in confidentiality occurred. Any information obtained about employees or contractors of HPSNZ which “may give rise to further action” will be referred back to chief executive Michael Scott.

You can see from that description Miskimmin’s dark hand at work. It is all about what went on in CNZ and HPSNZ that screwed up his “perfect” policy of centralisation. Who is to blame for mismanaging Miskimmin’s baby? No one is even looking at whether the baby’s parents should have accepted our offer of free contraception. Heron would do New Zealand sport a huge favour by discussing a subject Moller dodged. Because the legitimacy of the Miskimmin policy of centralisation is where the problems in these sports begin.

And so sadly I would argue that the CNZ Review will be no more successful than the three swimming versions. Good people will wander around looking for the wrong things in the wrong places. Already the Chairman of CNZ is beginning to sound like a succession of SNZ Chairmen. Someone called Tony Mitchell is bravely reported to be saying, “The only way forward is to join together with HPSNZ on this review, so we can clear the air, move forward, and resume, hopefully, a better improved programme.” Mitchell confirmed chief executive Andrew Matheson has been on sick leave since last Friday as the organisation deals with the unprecedented crisis.

I recall three SNZ Chairmen mouthing the same platitudes. And look what happened here – nothing. Of course nothing happens when everyone is so petrified of losing Miskimmin’s money they would fare rather play “The Emperor has no clothes” than tell the truth. For as long as that happens Miskimmin will continue to walk around naked with cycling and swimming following at an embarrassingly close distance. I suspect the most valuable person in all this, the person who contributes the most is the person who will pay most dearly – Anthony Peden. Why? Because it’s Peden the Emperor has chosen to blame.

Eyad Warming Up

I am seventy years old, and now I’m going to sound like it. What the hell has happened to the Auckland Open Championships? They are nothing like the event they used to be. When Toni Jeffs, Nichola Chellingworth and Jane Copland were swimming and winning that meet; when Ross Anderson was taunting over-zealous officials and when TV1 News turned up with two cameras, it was as different as chalk and cheese with what I have had to sit through tonight. The sport can never grow and prosper when this is the best competition New Zealand’s largest region can offer. I’ve been to more exciting funerals than the Auckland Open Swimming Championships.

American soldiers in Auckland during World War 2 are reported to have said that Auckland City was half as big as New York grave-yard and twice as dead. Boy-oh-boy I’d hate to think what they would say after an evening watching swimming at the West Wave Pool. I think the real problem is the colourful personalities have disappeared. Grey officials wander around permanently worried that the slightest error will cause Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) to de-register their meet. Even an old rebel like Paul Kent has been won over to the well-behaved side. As we left on the first night I heard the commentator tell everyone to be back at 7.30am “ready to rock-n-roll.” Let me tell you. I was around when rock-n-roll was invented and this was not it. It was terrible. Let me give you some examples.

Auckland Swimming spent many thousands on a new score board. Last night it worked for the women’s 800 and half the men’s 1500 and then was no more. Through all the 50s when a score board is needed the brand new Auckland version broke down. Remember when Jo Draisy ran the AOD Room. To say it would never have happened then might sound old-fashioned – but it is bloody true. Goes to show that a SNZ registration is no proof that you can run a swim meet.

The “live” internet results were not posted on the Auckland website until after the meet had finished. I guess Auckland Swimming’s meaning of “live” is the same as the “live” of their meet.

The programs distributed before the meet began had no relationship to events in the pool. For some reason the whole meet was reseeded. Combine that with not enough accurate new programs and self-marshalling and making the right event in the right lane was entirely left to chance. It was as if one of the grey crew said how can we make life as difficult as possible for these guys? I know let’s play Lotto with the lane draw and not tell anyone the winning numbers.

Talking about deliberate difficulty – I have recently spent a bit of time in Waitakere Hospital. In fact, at the last Golden Homes Meet, I had to get a day release from hospital to get to the meet. I’m home again now but the doctors have warned me about walking too far for a while. So last night I am required by Auckland Swimming to enter the meet through the door at the back of the pool. I wait in my car until a park close to the door is available. All good so far. Then it comes time to leave and the back door is locked. The only way out is through the front door and a walk right around the West Wave Pool to get to the car. Once again Auckland Swimming is being difficult. If you are going to force people in through a specific door at least allow them the courtesy of leaving the same way. Certainly have another management meeting to see if there are any more decisions that can make life for the swimming supporter as difficult as possible.

I’m sure the number of entries is declining. There was one swimmer in the men’s 1500. That made for a fascinating twenty minutes of entertainment. The best part was watching the lone swimmer’s coach gallop along the pool screaming instructions. I couldn’t understand a word so I doubt the swimmer was getting much out of it either.

I’d love to know who the genius was that wrote the meet program. No one puts the 50 butterfly and 50 freestyle events next to each other. There is a reason for that. Normally the best butterfly swimmers are also very good at freestyle and vice-versa. But not in Auckland. Up here they say “How can we make life as difficult as possible for New Zealand’s fastest swimmers? I know let’s put their two best races next to each other.” Brilliant.

So there are one or two examples of what not to do. Auckland Swimming is in a very sorry state – not good at all. I was happy with Eyad who went into the meet ranked eighth in the 50 freestyle and came out fourth. Gradually he is working his way up.

I was also fascinated to see ex-Florida swimmer, Paige Schendelaar-Kemp, at the meet. I used to coach, Ozzie, her old Florida coach. It’s the first time I’ve seen Paige swim. She is not swimming as fast as she has done but I was impressed. She was only seventh in the 50 freestyle but was clearly the best swimmer in the pool. She is a class act and I hope that at 19 she doesn’t get put off by the stark comparison between the morgue she was forced to swim in last night and the NCAA events in Florida. Now there they really do rock-n-roll.

I was told today that a regular Swimwatch reader had recently made the comment, “Oh, why is he always so negative?” The implied criticism hurts; probably because it is true. And, as the expression goes, “The truth hurts”. But before apologizing I decided to check the past 100 posts and label each story as negative (meaning critical), neutral or positive. I did try to be ruthlessly honest and here is what I discovered.

It seems the Swimwatch reader is right. The largest number of stories, (45%), are negative. However a majority (55%) are either neutral or positive. So perhaps the balance is not as slanted as the criticism might suggest.

Positive stories do not attract as much attention. But critics need to remember the praise given to the extremely well-run swim learn to swim program at the Millennium Pool, the positive stories about the Quality Homes North Shore swim meet, the Comet Swim Club, Kate Ledecky, Dick Quax, Waitakere Hospital and many other causes.

But above all critics must realize, in swimming, there is much to be critical about. Someone has to recognize that falling membership numbers, one bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games, five Olympics with no medals and falling income are not good news. The delegates to the Annual Meetings do not hold those responsible to account – so we do it instead.

I wonder what our critic wants. Is it best to let the sport slowly decline into oblivion or is it best to draw attention to the problems in the hope they will be addressed? Exactly the same freedom that makes it important for critics to question Swimwatch needs to be afforded to those who criticize Swimming New Zealand (SNZ). The Swimwatch critic and the Swimwatch website are exercising the same freedom to criticize and long may that last, for both of them. An extremely wise Mohandas Gandhi put the same thought best.

Swimwatch critics are no doubt aware that recent posts have questioned worrying aspects of the Cycling New Zealand “Anthony Peden affair”. Reports on this subject are most certainly recorded in the “negative” column. But I see Swimwatch may not be alone. Newstalk ZB’s Andrew Dickens has decided that there are worrying aspects to this story.

Dickens describes the rumors that have been promoted and encouraged by some main stream media – especially TV One. The gossip is well known and does not need to be repeated here. However Dickens’ conclusions are very revealing and do bear repetition.

So, is the main stream media joining “negative” Swimwatch? Do any of those concerns apply to SNZ? I think we can safely say Andrew Dickens’ first point fits SNZ perfectly. He says there is a “nagging worry that Cycling New Zealand is another sporting organisation where the management is a little out of their depth.” It would be quite wrong to make that assertion without evidence. Take for example the employment of Gary Francis as the SNZ Talent Identification Manager. He was employed at the end of January 2018 and promised an early series of meetings to explain the function and purpose of the new position. The first meeting has finally been scheduled in Wellington for the 12 June 2018. That’s 3,216 hours of employment to arrange one meeting. At that rate, I expect, we will know what Gary Francis does in time for swimmers born early in 2020 to benefit. Some Swimwatch readers may be critical of our negative stories, but really can anyone justify 3,216 hours to organize a meeting in Wellington that, so far, only eleven people say they are going to attend?

Andrew Dickens goes on to make the point. “So many under-qualified people are being put in positions where they fail.   Weekend Warrior administrators do not become high quality professional managers when their sport suddenly receives a wad of cash.” Isn’t that the truth?

Look at the way SNZ handled Lauren Boyle’s illness during a SNZ Arizona high altitude camp. SNZ announced that the camp was a blazing success. All the swimmers were doing fine. But they weren’t. New Zealand’s best swimmer, Lauren Boyle, was sick in hospital and about to be sent home. SNZ lied to cover up her sickness. They lied to HPSNZ, they lied to Sport NZ, they lied to the press and they lied to the membership. They proved again that the cover up is worse than the crime. And for what? For money. Once you have gone into that gutter, selecting swimmers who have not qualified and all the rest of it becomes easy. Even by weekend warrior standards that blatant dishonesty demonstrated terrible judgement.

And finally Andrew Dickens has a word for the Boards of national sports federations. He says “We have an awful lot of enthusiastic amateurs running big budget enterprises and their boards of control need to keep a much closer eye on them or it all falls apart.” Dickens is right. The Board is responsible and, in the case of swimming, it has failed to exercise the duty of care we have a right to expect. Declining income, declining membership, poor competitive results, stunning delays in arranging meetings, lies to the membership have all proceeded unchecked and uncensored. The Board has not done its job. The organization is falling apart.

I have made this point before. Three New Zealand swimming coaches who between them coached New Zealand Open Champions, New Zealand open record holders, World Championship medallists, Pan Pacific medallists and two Olympic Champions had more than swimming in common. In our early years Duncan Laing, Russell Geange and I were employed in the freezing works of the meat packing giant Thomas Borthwick and Sons Ltd.

Duncan was a butcher on the lamb line of the Waitara Works in Taranaki. Russell was foreman of the lamb cuts room in the Waingawa Works and I was a management trainee in the Feilding plant. By an amazing coincidence the first ever shipping container of chilled lamb exported to the UK was cut and packed by Russell and was received and sold by me in London to the Marks & Spensers Marble Arch store. Today hundreds of chilled containers leave for the UK and a dozen other locations. But it all began with two swim coaches!

On a trip we did together to the World Short Course Championships Duncan told me he reckoned working in a freezing works was the best possible training for life as a coach. He may well have had a point. The current Head Coach of the All Blacks rugby team, Steve Hansen, also began his working life in a freezing works. Both Duncan and I were in awe at the record of the three national champions Russell coached in Carteron, a town of only 4,122. The bugger is still doing it as well. I tell you what – those two guys wouldn’t put up with half the PC nonsense that comes out of rowing, cycling or swimming centralised training facilities these days. Cotterill and Johns would be found wanting in a heartbeat. In a freezing works, Antares Place style bullshit has an extremely short shelf life.

One of the bigger jobs in my career in the freezing works was as General Manager for Central Scotland for the British farmer’s cooperative, FMC. In 1980/81 we built a new works in Perth. Because it was such an important investment I put a portable-cabin office on the site and worked there for the two years the plant took to build. I was back in Scotland a couple of years ago and am delighted to report that the plant is still working, supplying beef all over the UK. Alison was sorting some old photographs and came across these ones of the building’s progress.

January 1980 – Earth works begin. Dozens of huge concrete piles had to be driven into the soft soil.

May 1980 – A building begins to emerge

November 1980 – Almost done believe it or not.

1981 – Yes I shot the first animal and kept the hide on my new office wall.

1984 – The finished FMC Perth Meat Plant.

1984 – Preparing steaks for Harrods’ food hall.

1985 – There was even room for some NZ frozen lamb.