Swimming Auckland held its annual Anthony Mosse swim meet last weekend. I was pleased with Eyad’s results. It has only been one week since he completed his long distance conditioning training. What that means is a week ago he was working through his regular Saturday morning’s 100×100 on 1.25. Clearly it is a big change to move from that sort of training to sprinting 50m freestyle. Experience suggests that about five meets are required to reach a peak after a fourteen week aerobic and anaerobic conditioning period. Expecting too much after one week can lead to serious disappointment.

With that in mind I was pleased with Eyad’s results shown in the table below.

It has been a long road for Eyad from the discrimination and hostility of being a Syrian refugee – a road not made any easier by some sports authorities in New Zealand. However he has persevered and is succeeding.

The Anthony Mosse meet reflected the best and worst of swimming in New Zealand. That is not a surprise. It is hard for a major meet not to reflect its environment. I thought the number of entries (2727) and the management of the meet were good. Okay the meet might not be up to the Ft. Lauderdale Invitational’s 6900 entries but for a New Zealand competition 2727 is a good size. Whoever was responsible for managing the meet did a good job of getting the events through efficiently and on time.

So what went wrong? Well there are three things I would criticise.

Last year I complained about the number of disqualifications. New Zealand swimming is a disqualification paradise. In 2018 Anthony Mosse officials disqualified 82 swimmers. I thought that was bad; certainly much worse that I have ever seen in the UK, USA, Europe, Asia or Australia. Clearly my concern a year ago had no effect. I know that because this year, in 2019, the number of disqualifications increased to 112. That’s a 36% increase in one year – well done Swimming Auckland. Kicking swimmers out of a race is one thing Swimming Auckland has got better at. Increasing the misery of swimming by 36% obviously turns someone on.

112 disqualifications from 2727 entries is a DQ rate of 4.1%. Florida has a similar meet to Anthony Mosse. It is called the Ft. Lauderdale Invitational. Last year the Florida meet had 6900 entries and 56 disqualifications. That is half the number disqualified compared to the Anthony Mosse meet from two and a half times more entries. The Florida DQ rate was 0.8%.

That does not mean USA officials give bad swimmers a pass. Although I imagine there are Swimming New Zealand officials who will say that the New Zealand DQ rate is the product of bad coaching. If swimmers were taught to swim properly there would be fewer disqualifications. That is rubbish. New Zealand coaches teach swimmers as well as overseas coaches teach. Young New Zealand swimmers are as technically competent as overseas swimmers. The problem is not the coaches or the swimmers. The problem is the standard of officiating. New Zealand officials are too tough. Their idea of a fault would be ignored in Australia, Asia, Europe or the USA especially when the average age of the swimmers being disqualified at the Anthony Mosse meet was 11 years old; a hugely impressionable age.

The important question is, does the harsh DQ rate at a young age have a negative result?

Last year I said that the excesses of New Zealand judges would eventually cause a decrease in swimming membership. No sport can afford to hand out that amount of misery and not expect some retaliation. Swimmers are not going to put up with being kicked out of a race for whatever some badly trained official thinks is a fault. There are better things teenagers can do with their time. Women’s rugby and women’s football are growing at a hundred miles an hour. At least, in those sports, referees are taught to stay out of the way. It’s not hard to figure out why swimmers go off to other sports when their experience of swimming involves huge effort and considerable discomfort to be rewarded with a DQ – all that effort for nothing.

At the Anthony Mosse meet what that meant was that of the 2727 entries only 256 (9.4%) came from swimmers aged 16 or older. At 20 years or older, an age when swimmers can really start to achieve, only 41 entries (1.5%) came from those swimmers. The 41 entries came from 2 women and 6 men aged 20 years or over. With no senior swimmers, swimming is in deep, deep trouble. Imagine rugby without the All Blacks. That’s Auckland swimming.

My final complaint is the bloody doors to the pool. For some reason, whether it is a command from the Council management or the meet officials I have no idea, someone has ordered swimmers, coaches and officials to enter the meet through the back door. That door is then locked when the meet starts and everyone has to leave through the front door on the other side of the building. What that means is that anyone who parks at the back of the pool near the entry door has to walk for miles to get to their car after the meet. Anyone who parks near the front door has to walk for miles to get into the meet but does have a short walk at the end. Whatever way, a long walk cannot be avoided.

For most of us that is inconvienient but is not a serious problem. However for disabled officials or swimmers it is blatantly cruel and probably illegal. Only at West Wave would they invent a rule to punish the disabled. Only at West Wave would they go out of their way to make the experience of a visit as nasty as possible. Over the years I have visited 191 swimming pools in countries all over the world. In my opinion the worst pool by far is West Wave. It is a disgrace. The malice of its meet door rule says all you need to know about the pool’s management. Swimming Auckland should move its events to the Millennium Pool. Staff members are friendlier, the pool is cleaner and you can enter and leave through the same door.