Reaction to the Swimwatch post on the results of the New Zealand team at the World SC Swimming Championships has been swift and brutal. Some have accused me of treason. How dare I criticise New Zealand’s performance. Didn’t I know everybody was trying their best? Had I no thought for the feelings of the swimmers and Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) staff?

I have no concern for the feelings of Cotterill, Johns and Francis. Considering the hurt they have spread around New Zealand, they have not earned any concern of mine.

The suggestion of hurt to New Zealand’s swimmers is of more alarm. These comments ignore the last paragraph of the results post. This is what it said.

The reaction of critics does, however, raise some interesting points. Is it better to applaud a poor performance or to shine a torch down the road of where we want to go? What are the alternatives?

We could join the “happy family” of supporters who never acknowledge a problem. All is wonderful and serene. SNZ is bounding from one stunning success to another. For ten years SNZ has led the “this is as good as it has ever been” fan club. Of course SNZ has had to lead the way. Their government income depends on it. I would argue that the SNZ cheerleading has been a Donald Trump size lie. Seldom is it true. Remember New Zealand has not won an Olympic medal since Danyon Loader’s two Gold medals in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. But worse the distortion of the truth doesn’t do any good for the sport or for New Zealand’s swimmers. Living in a fools (because that’s what SNZ is) paradise does no one any good.

The “SNZ can do no wrong” support comes from various sources. None of them are believed. Main stream media are especially sceptical. From all that I hear most of them think SNZ is a pathetic joke. In another similarity with Trump, main stream journalist don’t believe a word that comes out of Antares Place. First, here are the Facebook posts of good honest SNZ members who live in hope that their national organization can do no wrong. These are the people SNZ exploits most.

Their support is commendable. However realism also needs to be brought to the table. Hunter’s swim was 18^th and therefore not fast enough to make the semi-final or final swims. The reality is he was 1.38 seconds behind the heats winner. That means he was just passing the 5m backstroke flags when the heats winner was finished. That is not “fantastic” or “Amazing” or “Sprint King Daniel. In fact Daniel Hunter is better than that. He should have been receiving more SNZ support.

SNZ is expert at gilding the lily. Their headlines overuse superlatives. For example:

A New Zealand Open Record is always worthy of support. However realism is also important. Sure the swim was a record. Sure it is the best four New Zealand men have ever swum 4×200 metres. But swimming professionals need to recognise another truth. The team finished 16.98 seconds behind the Russian heats winners. That is incredible. The best SNZ result ever is 16.98 seconds or about 33 meters – that’s pretty much a length and a quarter of the pool – behind the heat winner.

But the opinions that are inexcusable are those peddled by SNZ. These are highly paid people responsible for leading the sport. They are not Donald Trump public relations sycophants. But that’s how they come across. Gary Francis has joined those who distort and twist the truth. Here is what he said on day one of the World SC Championships.

All the Gary Francis superlatives should not blind New Zealand and especially HPSNZ to the fact that:

The New Zealand 4×100 Men’s Relay team was 11^th out of 13 teams in the event and finished 11.30 seconds behind the heat winners. That, as near as makes no difference, is equal to the entire length of a 25 meter pool. Francis should hesitate to use exciting terms to describe swims that are 25 meters behind. He should also definitely know better than to compare relay times to individual race PBs. This is not a North Shore Club junior carnival. This is the World Championships. The honest, even harsh, truth is important. The Francis comparisons are simply dishonest.

Emma Goodwin’s 100 freestyle was a good swim. Here again the Francis comparison to her individual race best time is a distortion of the truth. Francis should not corrupt the good things swimmers do by fiddling with the truth.

Ashby’s two New Zealand records in the 200 IM were worthy of praise. However it needs to be remembered that he was only 9^th in the heats. He was fortunate to make the final when a Russian scratched from the race.

When we are surrounded by a deluge of exaggerated praise it is very easy to lose touch with reality. Pointing out the truth of what went on in China is not disloyal. In fact I would argue it is a higher form of loyalty. Realising the reality of the work to be done is way more important than living in a Johns and Francis rose-coloured paradise.

The Board of Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) tells me their vision is, “Inspirational Swimmers, Exciting the Nation through Exceptional Results.” Their mission, they go on to say, is to “Create a sustainable high performance environment that systematically produces world class performances.” To do all this, their website tells me, they need, “To achieve podium results at the Olympic Games and other identified pinnacle events.”

It is way off the subject of this post but the same section of their website says SNZ “will aspire to operate with integrity and transparency and be accountable for our actions.” Well we know that’s a lie. Just look at the deceit and secrecy of their efforts to hide the report investigating my coaching. I doubt the occupants of Antares Place have any idea of the meaning of integrity and transparency.

SNZ’s Whole of Sport Plan sets the guidelines against which High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) measures the performance of SNZ. How SNZ performs determines how big or small the government’s beneficiary payment will be. Here is how SNZ say they should be measured.

I’m sure we agree – all that sounds pretty good. Cotterill, Johns and Francis are good with words. Problem is, they don’t mean much. With the exception of USA-trained Lauren Boyle, their words have never delivered results. But perhaps, after ten years, things are about to change. Let’s see how SNZ performed at this week’s World Short Course Championships. Was this the beginning of inspirational swimmers, exciting the nation through exceptional results?

The table below summarises how New Zealand swimmers performed in the 2018 World SC Championships.

So what does the table tell us?

1. No Bronze, no Silver, no Gold, no medals
2. One final swim for Bradlee Ashby who qualified for the final when Russia’s Kliment Kolesnikov scratched.
3. One semi-final swim for Bradlee Ashby in the 100IM. He placed 15^th and failed to progress to the final
4. 10 of 44 swims were PBs; a PB ratio of 22%.
5. Two NZ Open records, one to Bradlee Ashby in the 200IM and the other to the 4×200 Men’s Freestyle Relay.
6. Average place of each New Zealand swim 22^nd

What does the New Zealand performance mean?

1. It means that SNZ has taken New Zealand teams to three “world” events in 2018 (Commonwealth Games, Pan Pacific Games and World SC Championships) for a yield of one Bronze medal. That is pathetic.
2. SNZ has achieved a PB ratio of 27% at the Commonwealth Games, 31% at the Pan Pacific Games and 22% (10 PBs from 44 swims) at the World SC Championships. That is a seriously poor result. When is Cotterill going to take responsibility for this chaos?
3. Two open New Zealand records were set at the World SC Championships. One to Ashby in the 200IM and the other to the New Zealand men’s 4×200 relay team. The sorry state of New Zealand swimming was highlighted by the 4×200 relay result. The team set a New Zealand record and still finished 16.98 seconds behind the Russian heat winners. That is incredible. The best SNZ result ever is 16.98 seconds or about 33 meters – that’s pretty much a length and a quarter of the pool – behind the heat winner. Well done Gary Francis. Looks like your fully-paid junket to China really achieved a lot.
4. The average place of New Zealand swimmers at the World SC Championships was 22^nd. New Zealand swimmers were a massive average of 9.79 seconds or 18 meters behind the heat winners. New Zealand’s best are just beginning the last length when the best in the world are finishing. That gap is not going to be closed by Cotterill, Johns and Francis. Those three will qualify for the pension before a New Zealand swimmer qualifies for an Olympic Gold medal. The gap is too big and Cotterill, Johns and Francis do not have the necessary skills to do anything about it.

Surely SNZ is ashamed. Do they have any remorse? Do they feel uncomfortable about spending millions of dollars to watch New Zealanders swim in the heats at international events and seldom have anything Kiwi to watch in the evening finals? Internationally New Zealand has been turned into a Wairoa Club taking on a combined team from North Shore, Capital and United. Cry the beloved country. Sob in misery. Weep in embarrassment.

Post Script: It needs to be emphasised that swimmers, coaches and local administrators are not to blame for this World Championship swimming disaster. They are victims of decisions made by Cotterill, Johns and Francis. For years SNZ has been a predator, taking the money and causing harm. Nothing has changed.

Here we go again. High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) has announced the 2019 government handouts to New Zealand sport. Swimming’s beneficiary cheque is $900,000; the same as it was in 2018.

What did we get from giving the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, otherwise known as Cotterill, Johns and Francis, almost a million dollars in 2018? One Commonwealth Games bronze medal is the answer. 2018 was a very busy year. A Commonwealth Games, a Pan Pacific Championships and a World SC Championships were packed into the twelve months. Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) sent teams to all three. The return of one bronze medal was pathetic.

Next week in London 30 of the world’s best swimmers, including 15 Olympic champions and twice as many World champions will gather in London to hear how their future could look and why they need a Professional Swimmers’ Association. They will discuss a fairer means of distributing the money earned by the sport. There is nothing fair about what happens now. Cotterill, Johns and Francis are dinosaurs whose days are fortunately numbered. Not before time, the world of swimming is changing. New Zealand will probably resist reform to the end. You would expect no less from dinosaurs.

We need to remember that the money paid to SNZ is our money. We are taxpayers paying to keep SNZ afloat. We have a right to ask; are SNZ spending our money properly? Are we getting the return we should? Are swimmers benefitting from the cash or is it being lost paying for an expensive bureaucracy?

As many will understand, I have my views on the merits of our investment. The whole thing is a draconian waste. All we are doing is paying to keep a bunch of overpaid Antares Place bureaucrats alive. They are neither useful nor ornamental. They cost a fortune and contribute nothing. I’d just as soon see the $900,000 taken into Sky City and gambled on one spin of a roulette wheel than wasted the way it is. Consider this, how in any way are the members of your club going to benefit from our million dollar cheque.

If any member gets good enough to swim for New Zealand Cotterill, Johns and Francis will make him or her pay from their own pocket to travel to the meet. The $900,000 will be used exclusively to pay for Johns and Francis to sit back in comfort free of any personal cost. Will Johns or Francis provide assistance with your club’s lane fees or coaching wages? No. They have spent millions on lane fees and coaching costs on the North Shore of Auckland while the rest of New Zealand starves. Don’t expect to see a cent in Whangarei, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Nelson, Timaru or Invercargill.

Someone is to blame for the 2018 “one bronze medal” plight of swimming in New Zealand. We know it is not the swimmers or the coaches or the local officials. For years that group has been criticised and blamed by the likes of Cotterill, Johns and Francis. Those guys would say anything to shift the blame. But six years ago the CEO of Sport New Zealand, Peter Miskimmin, engineered a coup d’état in SNZ. The change centralised power into Miskimmin’s office in Wellington and the Cotterill, Johns and Francis lair in Antares Place. With that power came great responsibility. SNZ was awarded a million dollars a year and had the power to do whatever it wanted with the cash.

But the downside is, when you have all the power, when you have all the money, the buck stops with you. Responsibility for the performance of SNZ lies at the door of Miskimmin, Cotterill, Johns and Francis. For six years and at a cost of $6,000,000 they, or others like them, have ruled the sport of swimming. In that time things have got worse and worse, until in 2018 New Zealand travelled to three international meets and came home with one bronze medal. In 2012 the bureaucrats demanded power. In the six years since then they have brought the sport to its knees.

And yet unbelievably the government has decided to give SNZ another $900,000 to waste. The problem is, it is worse than waste. What Cotterill, Johns and Francis do actually causes harm. The problems get worse. When on God’s good earth is the penny going to drop? Giving SNZ money is not working. Don’t take my word for it. Look at the results of the last six years and $6,000,000 they have cost. Why would HPSNZ back that record with another million dollars? Or are they as stupid as SNZ?

We have said this before, but the best thing HPSNZ could do for swimming is to close their cheque book and hand over no money at all. Cotterill, Johns and Francis would either have to become big boys and stand on their own feet or they would leave to sponge off some other gullible sport. Either way swimming would be better off. And face it, whether SNZ get $900,000 or nothing is going to make no difference to what happens to your club in Te Awamutu or Stratford or Blenheim or Queenstown. My guess is that freed from the bureaucratic controls of Antares Place most clubs would find the rush of fresh air liberating.

I’m serious. If the Regions of SNZ want to do what’s best for SNZ they would call a Special General Meeting and order Cotterill to give back the $900,000. The money has not been earned. It is not being placed in responsible hands. Until most of the money is paid to the people who earned it, the swimmers, it would be better spent paying teachers, nurses, doctors and police. They certainly deserve it more.

One of the swimmers I help loves to ask questions. Her name is Alex and she is a triathlete. She has read my three books on swimming. Unfortunately in her case these appear to have raised more questions than they have answered. For an author who wrote the books intending to provide answers you can imagine my concern. Did Alex’s unsatisfied curiosity mean 100,000 words had been written in vain?

Today, for example, Alex asked whether, in a freestyle sprint, big kicks were more important that fast kicks or the other way around. Should a swimmer focus on improving the size of their kick and then move on to the kick tempo, or should it be the other way around?  I hate to think how many times I have been asked these “either/or” questions. Just about every swimming rule can be turned into an “either/or” question. Are big arm strokes more important than turnover? Is high intensity interval training more important than distance conditioning? Is technique more important than speed? In the gym, is form more important than the weight lifted? For a curious mind, like Alex, the range of “either/ors” knows no limit.

The reality is the answer to “either/or” is almost always “both”. When I was coaching Toni Jeffs she would frequently get frustrated at my call for bigger strokes at a faster rhythm. I could understand her annoyance. She already had one of the biggest stokes in New Zealand and at 0.90 there was not much to complain about with her turnover.

Occasionally she would grumble, “What do you want – bigger strokes or faster arms?”

Cautiously I would explain, “The answer is both. One stroke less at 0.85 is where you need to be.” Interestingly when she won a bronze medal at what were then the World SC Finals (wouldn’t Gary Francis love one of those this week) Toni swam the first 25 meters of her 50 meter race one stroke less in 0.85. It was a terrific swim that reflected the ability of a very good swimmer to combine size and turnover; in other words both.

Probably the most widely debated “either/or” question is the dispute between supporters of high intensity interval training and long distance conditioning. Now this really is a dumb exercise in academic futility. Dave Salo is the high priest of high intensity believers. The first chapter of his first book centres on tearing apart the benefits of distance conditioning. For example he says:

But I’ve known two high priests of distance conditioning – Arch Jelley and Arthur Lydiard. Never have I heard either of them say that the only way to prepare for a running race is to exclusively run around the Waitakere Ranges every day. Sure there is a time and place for twenty mile runs but that needs to be balanced by a time and place for race preparation speed training. In fact I’ve heard both coaches use expressions like “a balanced program” and if pushed to select one, most important, type of training would come down in favour of race preparation speed training.

The reality of these “distance conditioning” master coaches is a balanced program of distance, anaerobic and speed preparation dispensed as a 40% distance, 20% anaerobic and 40% speed training diet. Do you know what those ratios mean? They mean the answer to the high intensity or distance conditioning debate is “both”.

And, of course that makes sense. Each type of training provides the swimmer with unique skills not provided by the other types of training. By doing both the swimmer arrives at his or her competition with a package of skills not available to swimmers who have only done sprints or have only done a never ending program of 100 kilometres a week of 3000 meter swims.

Sadly sprint coaches and swimmers who prefer a Salo diet often distort the balance of “both”. When I arrived in Saudi Arabia Hayley Palmer was coaching Eyad. She let him know, in very graphic terms, that all he should expect from my coaching was a relentless diet of over-distance slow swims. That, of course, simply wasn’t true. The 40/20/40 mix of “both” meant there was a liberal dose of 8×25 fast swim and 8×25 fast kick sets. Sure there were also a few long swims. Eyad’s training this morning was 1000 warm-up followed by 2×3000 timed swims; a Waitakere Ranges session. But to say that’s all Eyad, Rhi, Toni, Skuba or Jane ever did is simply not true. Their programs were very much “both”. Palmer should have known that before distorting the truth.

So there you have it. Good training and good technique is so often about balance. Balance that is needed because winning big races requires fine speed and deep reserves of fitness and strength. The training that provides each of these qualities is different. Salo is right you can’t develop speed by swimming 2×3000. But you can’t train good fitness by swimming 25 sprints all day. You need “both”. That’s why both is the answer and is so often is the case.

I do hope this explanation has not raised another ten questions in the Alex brain. If it has the answers will usually be “both”.

Swimming New Zealand is operating illegally. Like a pair of mob bosses, Cotterill and Johns show scant regard for the law. Their personal power and position comes first, last and always. But the time has come for them to be called to account. The Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) mafia has had it too good for far too long. I imagine the reaction of some readers will be to wonder, what have I been smoking? Surely a fine national sporting body like SNZ would not operate outside the law. But it does and here is how it works.

Section Three of the SNZ Constitution deals with the status of the organization. Paragraph 3.1(d) says:

That seems pretty clear. The world governing body of swimming, FINA, has a set of rules. They insist regional associations like SNZ accept and comply with those rules. In its constitution SNZ has agreed to be bound by and observe FINA’s rules. But here is where all that comes unstuck. You see included in FINA’s rules are the following restrictions:.

Therein lies the problem. SNZ is bound by and accepts these six FINA rules. In fact I’m prepared to bet a dollar that Johns and Cotterill believe that the conditions imposed by the FINA GR4 rules are exactly what SNZ needs to secure its paramount position in the swimming market place. I can’t see either of these mafia dons having the slightest problem with SNZ’s absolute authority over New Zealand competitions, affiliations, contacts and punishments. The arrogance of power precludes them from accepting anyone wanting to offer an alternative product – even when the alternative is clearly superior.

The problem is that Johns and Cotterill’s position and the SNZ rules are against New Zealand law. What Johns and Cotterill support is a monopoly. Clear restrictions are in place designed to lessen competition in the swimming market place. And that’s illegal. Here is how what Johns and Cotterill do is described in the New Zealand Commerce Act 1986.

So there you have it. The FINA rule, accepted and endorsed by SNZ, Is in clear breach of Section 27 and 28 of the NZ Commerce Act 1986. Monopolies are not allowed. Not only that, the insistence by SNZ that all members wanting to join SNZ must sign a form agreeing to be bound by SNZ’s illegal laws is also an illegal act. The coercion used by Cotterill and Johns that requires us all to sign membership forms that contain these illegal provisions makes every membership null and void. Cotterill and Johns cannot force us to act illegally. By requiring each of us to sign a form accepting their antitrust rules we have all been forced to act illegally.

It will certainly be worth challenging all this in Court. Once the current misbehaviour of SNZ relating to the report on my coaching is sorted out by the Privacy Commissioner, challenging the monopoly position of SNZ in Court is the next item of business. It will be an important case. Around the world swimmers are working to secure the freedom to pursue their sport wherever they want. New Zealand swimmers should not be denied the same freedom – no matter what FINA and SNZ write in their rules. The right of good swimmers to earn a living from their occupation cannot be restricted by two Antares Place bureaucrats.