By David

The story I am about to relate is based on rumour and gossip. I could very well have facts that are wrong, details that are missed and information that is exaggerated. However even if the news out of Swimming New Zealand today is only half true, it is a colossal scandal.

The last time Cameron went to a major swim meet was the New Delhi Commonwealth Games. With Swimming New Zealand’s blessing she spent most of her time commentating for her husband’s television channel. Nepotism is a Cameron family tradition – husband, wife, daughter and son; oh, what a tangled web. I doubt that her handsome Swimming New Zealand pay was docked while she toiled to boost her husband’s television ratings. I’m told that the New Delhi authorities complained to the New Zealand Olympic Association about Cameron’s attempts to use her press credentials to gain access to the New Zealand swimmers.

The result, in New Delhi, was that Swimming New Zealand paid for Cameron’s absentee management and Sky Television hired a bloody hopeless commentator. I would have thought anyone with an ounce of sense in Swimming New Zealand management would have said, “That’s the last time Cameron is pulling that trick.” But life continues to surprise. Just how wrong can you be?

The Ineson Report comes and goes and bugger me Cameron is on her way to Shanghai. Hubby Cameron from Sky Sport has come to the party and Wifey Cameron will be streaming into every New Zealand sitting room telling us all about the swimming. And while she is making a hash of that, remember she will still be drawing her Swimming New Zealand pay. But worse she will be hovering; a Sky sponsored poltergeist tearing the heart out of the New Zealand swim team. Remember 80% of the swim team told Ineson this woman was useless. Now she is back. Imagine how those swimmers feel about having those red rimmed glasses drilling into their soul. I can’t stand it and have cancelled my Sky contract.

From what I’ve heard, Sky Television may have given Cameron a job but Swimming New Zealand has been complicit. I’m told Swimming New Zealand arranged Cameron’s visa and have included her name on a list of Swimming New Zealand people going to Shanghai. Three weeks after she should have been booted out of swimming and she’s off to the World Championships on a visa provided by the Coulter gang.

Except this time the High Performance Governance Committee must carry the bulk of the blame. They met me in an Auckland pub. They asked me to believe they would deliver a new beginning. They asked for my tolerance. Instead they have delivered the same old, same old; Cameron on the plane, with the team, on her way to China. I guess that’s about all you can expect from Ross Butler, insurance salesman. While I expected no better from Butler I am disappointed in Norfolk and Fitch. Norfolk promised much as a representative of swimmers who desperately needed representation. Instead she fell for the oldest management trick of them all and accepted a job on a management committee. You don’t believe it’s a management committee? Why the hell else is it called “Governance” then? Helen and Alison, you are now responsible for Cameron still being on the Swimming New Zealand payroll. You are responsible for her being in Shanghai. You are compromised beyond belief. You cannot play both sides of the management fence.

And SPARC, Swimming New Zealand is going about its business as usual, as though your Ineson Report did not exist; as though your money was theirs. What Swimming New Zealand did in the open yesterday, it does today behind the smokescreen of its High Performance Governance Committee. SPARC, you are being conned by guys who are masters of that skill. You proved beyond any doubt that Cameron was a disaster. Barely a person you interviewed thought she was up to the job. Coach Regan can’t stand her. A fact that’s hardly surprising given the way she has treated him. And yet in spite of all that there she will be, in the middle of China, in the heart of the New Zealand swim team. Whatever way you look at it, Peter Miskimmin, your organization is being treated with derision.

It is impossible to imagine how any organization could work so hard to screw the chances of its best athletes. Ross Butler announces on the Swimming New Zealand website that, “They travel as one team, supporting each other,” and at the same time he has Mark O’Connor down at the Chinese Embassy buying Cameron a visa. Is Butler intentionally dishonest or is he so stupid he does not understand what 80% of his members are saying; are pleading for him to recognize. Cameron is as divisive as all can be. There is no chance, none at all, of the New Zealand team being “one team” while Cameron is within a hundred miles of the Jade Buddha Temple. As they say in the USA, “Wow, that Swimming New Zealand sure is a piece of work.”