It has long been my view that the inhabitants of Swimming New Zealand’s (SNZ) Antares Place offices are destroying the sport. Like some terminal disease the deterioration is relentless, membership and results are irresistibly slipping away. An occasional flicker of life is merely a temporary glimmer of hope. While those responsible for the care of swimming remain, nothing can change the sport’s fatal descent into oblivion.

It will come as no surprise to hear that in my view blame for swimming’s problems lies with its administration; not the coaches, not the swimmers and not the officials. Antares Place inmates are wrecking a good sport.

The most recent measure of the creeping decline came last weekend at the SNZ Open Water Championship in Lake Taupo. New Zealand swimming took a significant and serious step backwards. The incompetence of Cotterill, Johns and Francis was once more cruelly exposed.

The following four tables show what I mean. The first table shows the time swum by the winner of the men’s 2019 10k event – 2.03.07. Further down the table the winning times for previous years and the average of the previous year’s swims are shown. What do the figures tell us?

1. The 2019 swim (2.03.07) is the slowest winning time in seven years
2. The 2019 swim is 4.54 minutes behind the average winning time (1.58.53) of the past seven years.
3. The winner of the 2019 race would be about 500 meters behind the average winner of the race in the past seven years.

MEN

Now let’s look at the same data for the women’s 10k race. This information is shown in the next table. Sadly the women’s story is very similar to the men.

1. The 2019 swim is the slowest winning time (2.12.17) in seven years
2. The 2019 swim is 3.08 minutes behind the average winning time (2.09.09) of the past seven years.
3. The winner of the 2019 race would be about 250 meters behind the average winner of the race in the past seven years.

WOMEN

It seems clear – for both men and women the 2019 winning time is significantly slower. Winning the national open water New Zealand title was not as tough in 2019 as it was in the seven previous years. But while winning the race in 2019 was easier what about the quality of the open water competition. The 2019 winner was slower but was the winner pushed harder by those who ended up second and third? What do the times say about the depth of the field? Or did the second and third placed swimmers in 2019 also swim slower than in previous years.

The next table below attempts to answer that question. The table shows the times of the first three place-getters in the 2019 men’s race and for previous years back to 2013. The three times for each year are then averaged to show the average time swum by the first three swimmers. What does this data tell us about the quality of New Zealand open water swimming?

1. The average time of the first three place getters in 2019 (2.03.48) was the slowest in seven years.
2. The 2019 place-getters were on average 4.02 minutes behind their equivalent place-getters who averaged 1.59.48 in the previous seven years.
3. The 2019 place-getters were on average 350 metres behind their equivalent place-getters in the previous seven years.

MEN

Now let’s look at the same data for the women’s race. This information is shown in the next table. On this occasion the results for women are better than for men. However they are still not good.

1. The average time of the first three place getters in 2019 (2.14.65) was the third slowest in seven years. The three place-getters in 2019 were faster than the three place-getters in 2015 and 2017.
2. The 2019 place-getters were on average 2.57 minutes slower than their equivalent place-getters who averaged 2.12.08 in the previous seven years.
3. The 2019 place-getters were on average 230 metres behind their equivalent place-getters in the previous seven years.

WOMEN

The standard of open water swimming in New Zealand has declined. Of course I accept that water conditions, weather and the placement of buoys can make a big difference to open water times. I have no doubt SNZ defenders will claim that conditions in the Taupo event make this post theoretical nonsense. However the universally bad result of almost every comparison is significant. Conditions in Taupo this year cannot excuse the poor performance compared to previous years. The huge gap of several minutes and several hundred meters between 2019 and previous year’s results suggests the general conclusion of a serious SNZ open water problem is pretty accurate.

Congratulations Cotterill, Francis and Johns. Another year has gone by and it sure looks like your contribution to New Zealand’s open water swimming has been a disaster. Overall this 2019 open water result represents a backward step of about 3%. And that disaster is again the fault of Antares Place incompetence. What on earth are we paying you for?

Warwick Bleakley presents me with my Private Pilot’s Licence

As a teenager there were two things I had to do. I had to win a New Zealand breaststroke swimming championship and I had to learn to fly an aeroplane. I never did manage the swimming ambition, although I have coached two swimmers to that particular success. Perhaps that counts.

I don’t know what began the flying goal. However I certainly remember the event that fixed it as a lifelong obsession. When I was seventeen my parents agreed to fund a trial flight with the flying school at Hamilton airport. Partway through the flight the instructor asked if I’d like to fly inverted. I wasn’t sure what inverted meant but agreed. Seconds later we were upside down. It was fantastic. Then something really amazing happened. I looked up and above me was a cow grazing on a green Waikato field. From then on I knew this flying business was for me.

Shortly after the first flight I accepted a scholarship to study in the United States. My flight training had to be put on hold. It was not until many years later that the chance to start again came my way, this time at Palmerston North airport. The Head Instructor was, well known aviation personality, Warrick Bleakley; a truly exceptional instructor.

I feel certain that Bleakley knew I was not one of those gifted pilots who don’t get into an aeroplane but strap the plane to themselves and fly. But he recognised my love for flight and taught me to be careful and proficient. I was never going to be a top-gun but became a cautious and safe pilot.

After seven hours of tuition on May 16 1982 Bleakley climbed out of the PA 38 cockpit and said, “Ok, why don’t you do a circuit on your own?” They say no pilot ever forgets their first solo. That was true in my case. I wasn’t afraid. No, the emotion I felt most was an overwhelming sense of freedom as the wheels left the ground – alone, me, an aeroplane and the sky; awesome.  The rest of the circuit was pretty standard stuff – climb to 500 feet, turn right, continue to 1000 feet, turn right again, complete the downwind landing checks, begin the descent, obtain clearance to land, turn onto finals, slow the aeroplane, pull on full flaps, hold it off the ground, hold it off, touch down and roll to a stop. I was back on the ground alive.  Control towers are not known for their general chit-chat. But, as I taxied back to the aero-club, the radio said, “Echo, Quebec, Mike – congratulations, you are now a pilot..”

“Wow,” I thought, “That’s right, I really am.” What did Warwick Bleakley know? I wasn’t just a pilot. I was a top-gun. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Alison about my new status.

Actually Warwick knew quite a bit about flying. Patiently he took me through the curriculum required to earn a private pilot’s licence (PPL). When I screwed up some exercise he was brilliant at sitting, not touching the controls, while I sorted out the problem. Lesser instructors would have taken over long ago. He could be tough though. When I was practicing forced landings, I was making a mess of selecting somewhere to land. I had a bad habit of always looking for a better paddock.

Warwick said, “David; if you keep doing that, we will die. Make a decision and stick to it.” His “we will die” was so certain my forced landings improved immediately. Several years later I was flying from Auckland to Wellington on my own when an oil pipe burst in the engine. Shortly afterwards the engine stopped. This time the forced landing was for real. I looked around for a paddock and found two. Which one should I choose? They both looked good, but which one was best? Then I heard a voice saying, “David; if you keep doing that, we will die, Make a choice and stick to it.” I chose one of the paddocks and put EKR down in what turned out to be a pretty good landing.

Alison and Jane were in Wellington Hospital when that happened. Jane had just been born and she still had a father. So thank you Warwick.

Armed with my PPL I began flying all over the country visiting our company’s offices. My flying hours quickly increased until I was well over 1000 hours. I had flown in New Zealand, the United States and the UK. But there was a problem. My license was restricted to Visual Flight Rules (VFR) which meant in bad weather or at night I couldn’t fly. I was forever leaving aeroplanes all over the country. I needed an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) rating.

The Motueka Flying School was the answer. I enrolled in their IFR program and spent a holiday month with Alison and Jane doing tourist things and learning how to fly without looking out the windows.

My hours continued to accumulate as I flew all over New Zealand. My log book tells me I’ve visited the airfields at Dunedin, Tairei, Wanaka, Cromwell, Alexandra, Milford Sound, Queenstown, Ashburton, Timaru, Christchurch, Kaikoua, Blenheim, Nelson, Motueka, Wellington, Paraparaumu, Masterton, Palmerston North, Fielding, Wanganui, New Plymouth, Hawera, Stratford, Taihape, Taumaranui, Taupo, Rotorua, Hamilton, Auckland, Ardmore, Whangamata, Napier, Wairoa, Gisborne, Bridge Pa and Waipukurau. It is a privilege to fly around a country like New Zealand. For such a small place the scenery is spectacularly diverse. Everyone knows about the Southern Alps and the Queenstown and Wanaka lakes. But forgotten areas like the coastal strip between New Plymouth and Auckland are also surprisingly and stunningly different.

Many years ago I sat in the cockpit of a 747 flying between London and Anchorage, Alaska. I wanted to talk about the finer points of flying a jumbo jet. The captain however was more interested in the thrill of flying a Piper Arrow around New Zealand. He said, he’d heard New Zealand had some of the best flying in the world. He may well be right.

Sadly I can’t pass the medical test to fly any more but wouldn’t have missed any of the 2000 hours for the world. So thank you Warwick, thank you Motueka Flying School, thank you for introducing me to a world that never grew old, that never ceased to amaze.

Many New Zealanders will have noticed the strange sequence of disasters that have struck New Zealand sport. Is that just bad luck or is there a common cause? Before discussing the answer to that question let’s consider the nature of the infection. Named after its founder I have called the disease the “Miskimmin Malaise”.

Swimming was infected first. That suspect honour was the result of Jan Cameron’s open acceptance of Peter Miskimmin’s centralised training regime. The policy was never going to work. It failed for many reasons, too many to discuss in detail here. However the leading problem was the impossibility of a centralised training program accommodating the different coaching needs of different swimmers. The training Bowman gave to Phelps was very different from Salo’s Peirsol program. That diversity is America’s strength. The lack of choice was New Zealand’s downfall.

The twenty year failure of anyone at Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) to realise that simple truth resulted in the failures and problems that have come to be linked to the “Miskimmin Malaise”.  Foremost among the problems is an inability to hold on to coaches. It will not surprise anyone to learn that no one coach can be all things to all people. Lauren Boyle is said to have got on very well with Mark Regan but couldn’t stand David Lyles. Two or three swimmers justifiably complain about a coach they don’t like and the bureaucrats replace the coach with another coaching wonder. Then that coach suffers the same fate. How no one in SNZ had the IQ to work out that it was the policy that was wrong, not the coach or the swimmers, t have no idea. The fact it took them 20 years to figure it out shows the stupidity of the inmates of the Antares Place offices.

In the end SNZ went through eight Head Coaches in ten years. Inevitably SNZ failed, the program failed and the swimmers failed. Sport NZ blamed SNZ. SNZ blamed poor coaching. The coaches blamed the swimmers. The whole thing was and still is the mess we have come to know as the “Miskimmin Malaise”.

Swimming led the way but, as the disease spread, it has been followed by other sports. Cycling has the same problems but the disease is not as advanced. Give it time – that is where Cycling is heading.

The first signs of a fever began to show when Miskimmin centralised all cycling training in Cambridge. Suddenly a very good cycling coach, Justin Grace, wasn’t good enough anymore. He was far too common for Miskimmin’s liking. An Australian Anthony Peden was brought in to save the day. Eventually two or three athletes fell out with him and he was replaced by another import – this time a German, René Wolff.

There was nothing wrong with either Justin Grace or Anthony Peden. They were both very good coaches. The problem was the policy that came with their employment. The better the coach the more impossible it was to live within the confinements imposed by Miskimmin’s centralised regime. In fact Grace and Peden have gone on to have successful coaching careers in the UK and China. Surely that should cause New Zealand sport some concern. The whole world, it seems, is out of step except Peter Miskimmin.

I’m sure René Wolff is good enough as well. But he will not survive. How do we know – because we have seen it in swimming. Whether a coach is good or bad does not make any difference. No one survives the “Miskimmin’s Malaise”.

The next sport to show signs of a high temperature was women’s hockey. They had a very good coach, Mark Hager. He led New Zealand women’s hockey from eleventh or twelfth in the world to number three. He also helped the team win their first Commonwealth Games Gold medal. He was a tough, straight shooting sort of guy – a bit like swimming’s Mark Regan. Eventually a couple of hockey wall-flowers complained. One of them, the team’s goal keeper, should be ashamed of herself. I hope she is humiliated by the way things have turned out. Miskimmin ordered one of his Reviews. Hager couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of it all and resigned to take up the job of Head Coach of the world number one team, England.

Does any of that sound familiar? Of course it does. It is a copy of what happened in swimming and cycling. It is the “Miskimmin’s Malaise”. I was delighted to see the Captain and Vice-Captain of the hockey team speak so highly of Hager after his resignation. Sadly their support was too little, too late. That is not their fault. It always will be when a sport contracts the “Miskimmin Malaise”.

The next New Zealand sporting casualty of the disease was rowing. Now they had a superb coach. Dick Tonks was old-school brilliant. By a strange coincidence he had a similar gruff personality to swimming’s Regan and hockey’s Hager. He is famously quoted as saying about the world’s best rowers “I’m their coach, not their friend.” I always thought that personality was not what Miskimmin wanted. The younger, foreign, jargon experts are more to Miskimmin’s liking. No one could do much about Tonks, of course, because he was so blindingly successful. But Miskimmin bureaucrats bide their time. They don’t mind waiting.

Eventually they spotted a weakness and pounced. In a copy of what swimming did to Regan, rowing imposed rules and conditions that made it impossible for Tonks to continue and he resigned.  A few months later Rowing Canada confirmed that Tonks, who had guided New Zealand crews to over 30 Olympic and World Championship medals, would lead their high performance team through to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

You have to give Miskimmin credit. He has done a superb job of supplying world sport with some of the best New Zealand trained coaches. Sadly, of course, every coach that leaves New Zealand for a plum foreign job is a savage loss to New Zealand sport. History will look back on Miskimmin’s period as CEO of Sport NZ as a time of lost financial and human resources. That, after all, is the nature of the “Miskimmin Malaise”.

The previous Swimwatch post discussed how Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) managed to get the government to hand over $29 million. SNZ made promises they could not keep. They issued false prospectuses. They lied. This post will look at the other side of the balance sheet. How did SNZ spend the money? We have said that it was wasted because of three words – centralisation, ignorance and greed.

We have often discussed the failures of the centralised training program. It took SNZ nineteen years to realise the truth of what they were being told. But eventually it dawned on them and centralisation was abandoned. The fact it took nineteen years to realise the obvious says all we need to know about the IQ of those in Antares Place.  Sadly what Gary Francis offered as a replacement to centralised training is no better.

We have also commented on the role ignorance has played in the failure of swimming. Recently I explained how my high school swimming was inadequate preparation to help international athletes. Primary school arithmetic classes do not equip you to teach quantum physics to doctorate-level mathematicians. In fact a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. When I look back on my early coaching mistake it is a wonder that Toni, Nichola and Jane survived. I’m sure they would not have prospered had it not been for the wise counsel of Jelley and Lydiard. To my credit it took me a lot less than nineteen years to understand their message.

The CVs on display at SNZ reek of high school swimming sports. For example this is how the SNZ website describes Chairman Bruce Cotterill’s interest in sport.

A competitive swimmer in his teens, active in surf lifesaving, senior triathlons, golf and tennis – seriously I cannot imagine a worse CV to guide the career of a Lauren Boyle than that. I’d rather start with someone who had spent his/her sporting career sitting on a couch playing Space Invaders than Cotrerill’s amateur fruit salad.

Steve Johns claims a similar CV. The SNZ website says.

Of course Cotterill was going to pick Johns to be CEO – water polo, surf lifesaving and age-group swimming. Spot the difference. No wonder performance swimming in New Zealand is a mess.

Gary Francis has at least spent time on the side of a pool. Sadly once again the bulk of it has been with para-swimmers or age-group members of the North Shore Swimming Club. Again his experience is that “Gee Whiz” brigade stuff that is such a danger to senior performance swimmers. In my opinion the three guys running swimming in New Zealand are not equipped to do the job. Their training and background almost guarantees they will make bad decision. We should not therefore be surprised when that is what happens.

But the characteristic that has the greatest negative effect on the sport is greed. All the $29 million given to SNZ has been wasted on administration. Only a few pennies have gone to those who produce. Swimmers, coaches and clubs have seen next to nothing. Johns and Francis live like kings while the sport dies of malnutrition. The manner in which the money has been spent is a disgrace.

You will see that the total spent by SNZ comes to more than $29 million. The reason for that is because SNZ receive income, not only from the government, but also from affiliation fees, sales and other grants. Here then is an analysis of how Cotterill, Johns and Francis and their predecessors have spent the $29 million given by the government (ie, you and me – the taxpayers) and the income received from others.

It should be noted that when I talk about money paid to swimmers I mean money, like wages, actually paid to swimmers to spend as they wish; to buy a car, put a deposit on a house, buy groceries, live like normal human beings. Paying for a Francis ego trip training camp in Auckland does not count as money being paid to swimmers. Here are the numbers.

Figures do not lie. In nineteen years since the year 2000 SNZ has spent $59,687,885. Of that total $56.4 million (94.2%) has been spent on administration; spent by bureaucrats like Johns, Cotterill and Francis on themselves and their SNZ Empire. Swimmers on the other hand were paid only $3.3 million (5.8%).

And even those disastrous figures are putting SNZ in the best possible light. Most of the $3.3 million credited in these figure as being paid by SNZ to swimmers is PEGS and Prime Minister’s money paid by the central Government. SNZ has no option but to give it to the swimmers. My bet is Cotterill, John and Francis would take that too if they could.

Without the money given to swimmers by central Government – in other words money paid to swimmers from SNZ funds, the numbers since the year 2000 would be:

So take your pick – SNZ at best has given swimmers 5.8% of its income or at worst 0.2%. Either way I’m sure that must seem wrong to you. Whether swimmers are getting five cents from each dollar or one cent from every five dollars it has been a “Great SNZ Rip-off”.

Here we have an organisation responsible for the welfare of swimmers, which is forever telling the world how important swimmers are, and yet spends 94.2% or 99.8% of its money on itself and only 5.8% or 0.2% on New Zealand’s swimmers. That is greed and it is killing the sport, not only in New Zealand but around the world. Fortunately swimmers are beginning to understand the injustice. $56.4 million spent on the Antares Place office while 6,000 swimmers get as little as $152,500 is flat out wrong.

Greed has hurt the sport of swimming badly. Fortunately it is also going to see the sport change. Questions that yesterday would never have been asked are now demanding answers. Is Antares Place value for money? Is it worth $56.4 million? What would happen if it was savagely cut in size? Do swimmers deserve a more? As sure as god made little green apples what has happened since the year 2000 is not right. It has to change.

I would never suggest that Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) bureaucrats, Cotterill, Johns and Francis or their predecessors, were guilty of illegally misappropriating money provided by the government. I have no doubt that all the money provided has been properly accounted for. A qualified person has kept the accounts and a good auditor has been called in to check the work. The amount of money received and the amount spent will be accurate. The numbers will add up.

However, while the accounts may be technically as clean as the driven snow are they morally clean?  Are they pure and wholesome or is there a sinister lack of moral accountability that should concern the members?

These questions are important. SNZ has been stunningly successful at screwing money out of the government. Peter Miskimmin has coughed up big time. The table below shows the amount received by swimming in the 18 years since 2000.

As you can see the total government money bummed by SNZ since the year 2000 is $29,019,493; an average of $1,612,194 a year. I bet Cotterill and his mates wish they were getting that average amount these days. $29 million is a huge sum of money. If SNZ had put it in the bank each year it would be earning $90,000 a month today. That’s as much as they got from the government in 2018. $29 million could also have bought 124 years on a cruise ship or 60,000 years of ice cream, or a Falcon 7 jet.

Instead SNZ spent it on what? Largely themselves is the answer. But what the money was spent on is not the real problem. The most stunning question is what on earth did SNZ promise to get the money? What did Peter Mikimmin expect to get for his $29,019,413?

Surely Miskimmin is not so stupid that he hands out $29 million for no reason. Consider this fact. The government has given SNZ $3 of our tax money every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non-stop for eighteen years. In the time it takes to read this post Mikimmin will have given SNZ another $60. Not even Miskimmin is stupid enough to do that without the expectation of getting something in return. What did SNZ promise? What are they still promising? I’m guessing it wasn’t 124 years on a cruise ship, 60,000 years of ice cream or a Falcon jet. Although this is SNZ; anything is possible.

My guess is all sorts of pipe dreams were trotted out. SNZ has never been shy about over promising. In fact there is a remarkable consistency about the SNZ fairy tale. We were told the team that swam in the Sydney Olympic Games would do well but was really there to prepare for podium finishes in Athens. Four years later the Athens team would also do well but was there to prepare for Beijing. Four years later the Beijing team would also do well but was there to prepare for London. The same thing was said about London and Rio.

According to the New Zealand Herald, Gary Francis is reading from the same movie script today. Expectations for the Tokyo Games should be modest but in 2024, just look out. New Zealand will be there to stun the swimming world. Gary Francis is a Jan Cameron verbal clone.

The reality is that five Olympic Games have come and gone since the year 2000 and New Zealand has won nothing. $29 million has been spent for no return. In the commercial world Directors and CEOs would be in jail for the way SNZ has behaved. Over-promising is a serious offence. The Security’s Act is very clear. This is what it says.

The plans that SNZ submit to High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) are effectively commercial prospectuses. They say that in return for giving SNZ an amount of money HPSNZ can expect to receive certain specified benefits. Arguably SNZ has included untrue statements in many of the 18 prospectuses submitted since the year 2000. Over-promising once is a mistake, twice deserves a warning but eighteen occasion is 5 years in jail and $300,000 fine territory.

The lack of results confirms that the Board of SNZ has taken the government’s money under false pretences. And that is against the law. It is no good saying, “Oh we thought we would do well. We tried our best.” Petricevic, Roest and Steigrad from Bridgecorp plus others tried that defence and ended up in Mt Eden Prison.

When you ask for and get $29 million there is an obligation to perform. It is not an option. It is compulsory. SNZ has failed to deliver against the obligations it accepted when it held out its greedy little hands and took the $29 million. SNZ is perfectly happy to pay bloated salaries and lease expensive SUVs with the government’s money. They are good at the spending side of the balance sheet. But sadly SNZ has failed totally to deliver on its promises.

There is an obvious question – why has SNZ failed so spectacularly? That is a topic for another day. However three words come close to explaining the cause – centralisation, ignorance and greed. Centralisation, because for years SNZ demanded the right to control the preparation of every good swimmer in the country. Ignorance, because Cotterill, John and Francis don’t have a clue about the product. Cotterills recreational triathlons, Johns high school swimming and Francis club age-group coaching do not equip them to run an international swim program. Greed, because the lion’s share of the $29 million was spent on administration and fringe activities such as learn to swim tuition. Performance swimming only received a tiny amount of the $29 million. Most of the money stayed inside the glass doors of the Antares Place offices. None of it made it out into New Zealand’s swimming pools where it would have done some good.

SNZ lied to get the money and then misspent it.