For twenty years Swimwatch posts have discussed the evil futility of centralised training. Every argument was debated and exposed. And for no return. Jan Cameron, Bruce Cotterill and Peter Miskimmim were obsessed. Drag swimmers up to Auckland, train them under one roof and provide benefits not available in the rest of the country were seen as New Zealand’s path to a golden future.

It didn’t work. It was never going to work. It was easier to blame the author of Swimwatch than answer the question of why Olympic Games after Olympic Games came and went without swimming success. David Wright was a troublemaker. Those involved in making the centralised programme work, weren’t doing it properly.  New Zealand needed another foreign Head Coach. Monte Python’s circus had nothing on the fiasco Cotterill, Cameron and Miskimmim put swimming through.

But worse than the damage done to the sport, the damage done to two generations of young New Zealand swimmers was a disaster. It didn’t matter whether you were a swimmer on the inside being indulged by Cotterill’s largess or on the outside toiling up and down some provincial swimming pool. The destruction was equally severe.

On the inside the special platforms and seats at the National Championships, the selected free uniforms, the team meetings at Commonwealth Games that only Swimming New Zealand coached swimmers could attend, and the free coaching produced its own form of sporting apartheid. Them and us, it was there for all to see. It was sick. It was wrong. And it conveyed an unmistakable message.

“You are the recipients of all these benefits. You had better produce a result.”  

And of course, it didn’t. Why? Because Swimming New Zealand had produced a pressurised, toxic environment incapable of sporting success. For years I watched good swimmers come and go, try and fail. At times I wondered whether the tragedy that has happened in cycling would happen first in swimming. Fortunately, in swimming, those hurt most just got out and retired. The sport’s membership fell by a pretty consistent 8% per annum. Good swimmers packed their bags and caught a flight across the Pacific to earn an education for their labour. Internationally New Zealand was incapable of making a world class final. The standard of New Zealand coaching collapsed. But Cameron, Cotterill and Miskimmin persisted. And swimming escaped without paying the ultimate price.

For those of us on the outside the effects of centralised training were just as severe.  We were left explaining to loyal swimmers why they had to pay to attend swim meets while, often slower swimmers in the Swimming New Zealand program attended for free. We struggled to find a reason Swimming New Zealand coached swimmers sat on flash chairs on a raised platform at the National Championships while our world class swimmer struggled to find space on a concrete bench beside the West Wave pool.

But worst of all, we were ignored. Two of New Zealand’s fastest breaststroke swimmers left my coaching program to swim at United States’ universities. One went to Hawaii and the other to Washington State. The circumstances of them leaving and living in the United States were eerily similar. Both were national open champions. Both swam for New Zealand in international events immediately before leaving, one in the Oceania Championships, the other in the Pan Pacific Games. Both were successful in those events, one set a new national relay record, the other won a place medal in her final. Both caught an airplane, flew to the United States, stayed for four years and not once were contacted by swimming New Zealand. No note asking about their progress. No congratulations on a personal best swim. They weren’t in Swimming New Zealand’s centralised program. They weren’t even in the country. They didn’t exist.

For young New Zealanders who have worked for a decade getting good enough to represent their country that sort of rejection is hard to take. As one of the same swimmers was told by a National Coach, Swimming New Zealand’s silence screamed, “You are a national embarrassment.” It was all no problem for the self-interest of Swimming New Zealand’s centralised programme. Swimming New Zealand’s self-interest justified any abuse, validated any atrocity.

And then it changed. Cameron was no more, Cotterill resigned and Miskimmim was in the process of retiring. Sport New Zealand had turned its attention to rowing, canoeing and cycling. Cambridge, not the North Shore, was where Sport New Zealand would build its centralised empire.

The new guys at Swimming New Zealand were Steve Johns and Gary Francis. Somehow or another they came to the opinion change was needed. Instead of slavishly repeating the errors of the past, swimming would drop the centralised policy and build a program around the American club-based coaching structure.  

And that is what we have now. But best of all, what a difference. The decision has been a breath of fresh air. The abuse has eased. The swimming is better. There is a feeling that success is close at hand.

Those involved in the sport need to be aware that it took twenty years to bring swimming to its knees. No matter how bold or correct the decisions of Johns and Francis might be, the abuse and failures of twenty years will not be fixed in five minutes. But does it feel better being involved in a sport where your efforts have a chance of success? Of course, it does.

More important than all that – is it better to be involved in a sport where rotten policies that caused untold hurt and mental stress have been discarded. Discarded and replaced by a more caring, a more sympathetic programme. You bet your life it does. At least those that we coach now are safe from systematic, structured abuse. Well done Swimming New Zealand. Well done Steve Johns and Gary Francis. To quote Mohammed Ali, “You done splendid.”