Eyad has completed the Mare Nostrum series of meets and is now at the Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) training camp preparing for the World Championships. I was pleased with Eyad’s swims at Mare Nostrum. The table below shows his full Mare Nostrum results.

The most pleasing feature was his improvement in the 50m butterfly from 26.27 to 25.95 to a personal best 25.84. A progressive result like that is an important feature in a tour like the Mare Nostrum series. It is a strong indication of better things to come. Eyad’s 50m freestyle series was close to being just as successful – 24.38 to 24.01 to 24.31. His 100 butterfly time of 59.79 was a personal best but I’m sure does not yet reflect his potential in this event.

It is important to thank the North Shore Head Coach, Andy McMillan, for looking after Eyad’s training during the Mare Nostrum series. I have always been hugely protective of who helps “my” swimmers on occasions such as this. In forty years pretty much the only people I have trusted before this trip were, in athletics, Arch Jelley and in swimming Duncan Laing, Horst Miehe and Greg Meade. All four were excellent – not that they need my endorsement. Andy is number five. From what Eyad tells me Andy is the equal of his old coach, Duncan Laing. There is not much praise higher than that.   

As a result of the Mare Nostrum swims Eyad has been selected by FINA to swim in the 50m and 100m butterfly at the World Championships in Budapest. He will represent the World Refugee Olympic Program. His schedule will begin on Saturday, 18 June with the 50m butterfly.

In the meantime, Eyad is preparing with the SNZ team at the pre-championship’s Samorín, X-Bionic Sphere staging camp in Bratislava, Slovakia. Help with Eyad’s preparation has been taken over by the St. Pauls Head Coach, Graham Smith. Eyad reminded me that Graham interviewed me several years ago, when he was studying coaching at university, about the application of Lydiard/Jelley training principles in a swimming program. Thank you, Graham, for the help you have given Eyad this week. Eyad has been well cared for indeed. Also, congratulations on the terrific job Graham is doing at St. Pauls, especially with Laura Littlejohn. She’s a good one.

When you come into contact with the world class swim coaches New Zealand has, it makes you acutely aware of the ludicrous decades of centralised training the sport was forced to endure by Miskimmin and Cameron. Three words you could never say to them were, “Dumb it down.” What a stunning waste when dozens of young, talented coaches such as Andy, Graham, Gary, Jon and William were ready and available. The anchor of Sport NZ has gone. And from what I’ve seen New Zealand’s coaches are taking up the challenge in no small measure.  

And finally, well done SNZ on selecting the Samorín, X-Bionic Sphere facility. Eyad tells me the pool, the hotel and the food are first class. He can be pretty hard to please about these things. Getting Eyad’s approval means the camp must be doing things right.

You must acknowledge that ever since the new regime took over at SNZ these decisions are getting better and better. The days when a New Zealand international team was split into males and females because of a booking error are becoming a distant and dark memory. Gary Francis and the New Zealand based World Championship swimmers arrive at the camp tonight New Zealand time. Things in the sport of swimming are looking up.

The only suggestion I would have is that on a SNZ international trip such as Mare Nostrum, the World Championships and the Commonwealth Games, SNZ introduce an incentive scheme for personal best swims. It might start off at a modest $100 per PB. On this trip the total cost so far would be only $1800. Surely SNZ could afford that amount. As the years go by and swimming’s financial health improves the amount could increase. No one is saying money is necessary, but it is a nice gesture that focuses the athlete’s attention on what is important in the progress of their swimming careers.  

On behalf of Eyad and me, thank you Steve, Gary and Amanda. As Mohamed Ali said, “You done splendid.”

Words fail me. They really do. After spending half an hour last week promoting the idea of getting rid of the Queen as New Zealand’s Head of State, Du Plessis-Allan has turned her pathetic attention to New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta. Du Plessis-Allan does not even know Mahuta’s title. She calls Mahuta “our Foreign Minister” – that will be a not so veiled insult, implying Mahuta is foreign – not really one of us. Truth is Mahuta is way more New Zealand than an import from white South Africa, who continues to promote “jaapie” poison.

The New Zealand Herald promotes Du Plessis-Allan’s views as, “opinions from our world-class journalists.” They must be taking the piss. World class journalist? You mean her that called the Pacific Islands leeches. World class clearly has a different meaning in Victoria St West.

Du Plessis-Allan has three problems with Nanaia Mahuta.

1. Mahuta does not travel enough, especially to the Pacific Islands.
2. Mahuta is neglecting her local government reforms.
3. Mahuta appointed family members to some government jobs.

Let’s look at each of these accusations.

Mahuta does not travel enough, especially to the Pacific Islands.

Du Plessis-Allan must be joking. Here she is telling us, “China’s move into the Pacific is a direct result of the West – including New Zealand – neglecting it.”It was only five minutes ago Du Plessis-Allan was hauled over the coals by the Broadcasting Standards Authority for referring to the Pacific Islands as, “It is not worth the expense of sending the PM to the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru. The Pacific Islands wants money from us. The Pacific Islands are nothing but leeches on us”

Come-on, are the Pacific Island’s “not worth” visiting, or does Mahuta need to be, “fully focused on the rapidly changing Pacific situation.” Or is it that Mahuta has a better education than Du Plessis-Allan (MA, Hon) and is a Māori, Labour Minister of State. Perhaps qualities a far right and white South African would never credit as admirable? Her lot got out of South Africa for racist reasons. It looks like they are not going to change here.

Du Plessis-Allan spells out her double standard – in her own words. Is that what it takes to be “world class” at the New Zealand Herald.

Mahuta is neglecting her local government reforms.

You can bet your socks if Mahuta had been tripping up to the Pacific three times in the past month, Du Plessis-Allan would have had her “leeches” quotes at the ready. Mahuta would have been neglecting her work in New Zealand for islands that only “wanted our money”. Good God, even when Mahuta stays in New Zealand to work on the Three Waters reforms and the co-governance proposals, Mahuta is accused of neglecting both.

I notice Du Plessis-Allan calls the “co-governance proposals”, the “Māori co-governance proposals”. She does not understand that the word, “co” means two, Māori and Pakeha. But her view of life, some might call it racist, demands that anything involving a more democratic society is always down to the guys with the dark skins. Has South Africa’s shame has been exported here again?

Du Plessis-Allan goes on to assert that the Pacific, Three Waters and co-governance are causing the Prime Minister a problem. Why? Because, quote, “Mahuta has too much power. She is a kaumatua.” There it is again. Mahuta is brown and should be serving morning tea. You do wonder if Du Plessis-Allan is close to using her “leeches” quote as a description of the Māori caucus?

Mahuta appointed family members to some government jobs.

I want to get this exactly right.Here is Du Plessis-Allan’s quote from the New Zealand Herald.

“Then there’s the personal stuff. Act’s already raised questions in the House about the appointment of Mahuta’s family members to government jobs. At least one media outlet has run a story.”

We should all remember that this gem was written by Heather Du Plessis-Allan. That is the same Heather Du Plessis-Allan who is the third wife of Barry Soper. That is the same Barry Soper whose current job is political editor of the Newstalk ZB radio network. And we all know who’s got the prime evening slot on Newstalk ZB. Yes, it’s the same person that wrote, “Then there’s the personal stuff.” Well, Du Plessis-Allan certainly beats Mahuta in that game. She sleeps with one of her company’s bosses. The pot calling the kettle, “far right and white” perhaps?  

It would be wise for New Zealand to treat any utterance from Du Plessis-Allan with great caution. Her views are incoherent and have no place in the New Zealand we are trying to become. I’m not sure why people like Du Plessis-Allan are in New Zealand at all. Is South Africa one of those “leeches” places we’ve been told so much about?

Isn’t detest a most unpleasant word. Even its synonyms are offensive – abhor, despise, loathe and abominate. Only two objects generate that degree of disgust in my life. Both broadcast on Newstalk ZB – one at prime-time in the morning, Mike Hosking and the other in the equally popular evening slot, Heather Du Plessis-Allan.

They are New Zealand’s answer to the American politicians, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is what Wikipedia says about Greene.

Greene has promoted far-right, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theories including the white genocide conspiracy theory, as well as other disproven conspiracies such as false flag mass shootings, the Clinton body count, and multiple relating to 9/11. Before running for Congress, she advocated for executing prominent Democratic politicians. As a Congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis. 

I wonder whether any of that applies to the daily rants of Hosking and Du Plessis-Allan? We know the Broadcasting Standards Authority has already hauled Du Plessis-Allan over the coals for racist comments made about the Pacific Islands.  And so there maybe evidence to support the idea of “far right and white”.

Hosking too has been hauled up before the Authority on fourteen occasions since 2020. Once every two months someone has gone to the effort to file a complaint. In almost every case the Authority found Hosking’s outbursts were likely to cause offence but not beyond the limit of free speech. In September 2020 the Authority did rule that, “comments made by Mike Hosking were misleading in breach of the accuracy standard.” And so here too there is a question – is Hosking’s relationship with the truth as suspect as it seems?

I have used the word “rant” to describe what Hosking and Du Plessis-Allan indulge in every day. However, the word rant is woefully inadequate. I just can’t think of anything better to describe their constant, over and over again tirade of right-wing bluster. It is a world away from informative journalism.

For example, last night, the South African import was going on and on and on about what a good idea it would be to do away with the Queen as New Zealand’s Head of State. Clearly, she has no idea, or couldn’t care less, that New Zealand’s founding document was signed by 500 or so Māori chiefs as one party to the deal and the Queen (Queen Victoria) as the other party. The Treaty of Waitangi was not signed by a New Zealand Government. It was not even signed by the British Government. It was signed by the Crown, the Queen of Great Britain and about to become, the Queen of New Zealand.

Or is Du Plessis-Allan’s motive to do away with one party to the Treaty and achieve the ultimate pakeha rip-off – no Crown, no second party to the Treaty, no Treaty, no more reparations, no more protection and no more compensation. That sleight of hand would far exceed any land or cultural atrocity from the 1830s. Mind you, Du Plessis-Allan comes from South Africa. She may have learned how to strip native populations of their rights in a country expert at that skill.       

The Treaty is an important document for New Zealand and especially for its Māori population. And for that reason, especially if I were Māori, I would not have anything to do with damaging its validity. And I’d be telling Du Plessis-Allan to take her muskets and blankets and go away. We have no interest in selling the Treaty at any price.

I see the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is taking part today in a service to celebrate the Queen’s 70 years as New Zealand’s monarch. Once again Jacinda understands. And that’s a lot more than you can say about Hosking or Du Plessis-Allan. God save the Queen.

PS – It would be wrong to take this post as evidence that the author is a rabid royalist. I’m not. In fact, many of my ancestors came to New Zealand from Scotland. They supported Scottish independence. So do I. I know every word of the Scottish National Anthem sending “proud Edward’s army homeward, to think again.” But New Zealand is different. We are not ruled by Westminster. Scotland is. We are not even ruled by the Queen. But she is a signing party to our founding document and the safeguards it gives to those who were here before us. Both those deserve our protection.

Becoming a competitive international athlete from a small country like New Zealand, miles away from anywhere, has its own set of difficulties. The normal solution is to spend years traveling to America or Europe gaining the experience needed. John Walker did it that way. So did Danyon Loader. And so is Paul Coll. Steve Adams went to America and stayed to pursue his trade in the NBA. Some of New Zealand’s best athletes have traveled so often that the Olympic Games is almost just another meet against opposition they have raced a hundred times before.

Occasionally an inexperienced novice can bounce into the Olympic Games and win. But normally that event is where tough, hardened professionals accept the spoils of victory. So, how does a swimmer become a tough, hardened professional? On tours like Mare Nostrum is the answer.

That’s why I was pleased to see Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) arrange for a team of twenty-seven swimmers compete in the Mare Nostrum swim series. Three meets over two weeks is probably not long enough but it is certainly better than a weekend dash across the Tasman for the New South Wales Championships. The trick for SNZ now is to keep doing that sort of thing every year, over and over again. Whether it is the World Cup or the American Series or Mare Nostrum, SNZ must keep pushing swimmers to perform. There is no point in going once, ticking that box and staying in New Zealand. Gaining experience is tougher than that. It requires repetition.

How did Aristotle put it? “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Sure, there will be some who fail the test of repetition – don’t worry about that. They would have failed anyway. Others though will thrive and grow to become Walker, Adams, Loader champions. SNZ, for all that’s good in swimming, keep doing what you have begun.

Even in this first short trip you can see the beginnings of those who will thrive and those who will struggle. Most will find the experience too tough and will go onto other things. That is not a problem. Panning for gold requires turning over a lot of stones.

Here is what I mean when I say, “the beginnings of those who will thrive and those who will struggle.” None of this is a criticism of SNZ or any one swimmer. The purpose of the trip is to learn. So here is what I took out of their experience.

Twenty-seven swimmers went on the trip. In three meets they swam 253 races. The average number of races per swimmer was 9 – or 3 races per two-day meet. The highest number of races swum in the series by one swimmer was 17 and the lowest was 4. That all seems pretty normal. An average of 1.5 races a day for each swimmer seems about right.

Not so good – in fact pretty awful, was the ratio of personal best times. Of the 253 races only 18 (7%) were in personal best times. On a trip to race the world’s best swimmers New Zealand swimmers have to do better than that. Four swimmers swam 1 PB each, four swimmers swam 2 PBs each and one swimmer swam 6 PBs. Eighteen swimmers (66%) failed to swim a PB. This is international competition. There is work to be done. A PB opportunity has been missed.

Another measure of importance in a trip like this is how does each swimmer respond to the stress of travel, hotels, and competition. Do they flag and swim slower and slower as the days go by, or do they respond to the competition and swim faster as they adapt well to the stimulus of international competition?

For example, two swimmers had PBs and swam the following patterns in the three meets. This is a result swimmers should look for on a trip like this. It shows two swimmers thriving in the environment. Whether they were first or last in their race does not matter. They were set a challenge and responded well. The potential is there to grow and win.  

 On the other hand, swimmers can wither and die. They find the whole experience awful. All they want to do is party, party, party or catch the plane home and sleep for a month. For example, here are another two swimmer’s patterns of races.

And finally, there are swimmers that are neither good nor bad. They drift through the series with some good swims and a few disasters. The problem for this group is international champions have to do better than average. A better job next time is needed. Here are two examples.

A close look at the tour results and here is how I would evaluate the group’s performance divided into three categories – Good, Average and Work to be Done.

And so well done SNZ and the swimmers who took part. It is a start to lifting the standard of swimming here in New Zealand. I look forward to the same again next year. Excellence is a habit.

I have just read the most important article published about sport in New Zealand. It is written by Dana Johannsen and is published on the Stuff website. Her article discusses plans some athletes have to form their own union. That fact alone is sufficient to make Johannsen’s report essential reading. However, even more significant is the insight the article provides into the deception rife in the halls of sporting power.

The facts are simple enough. There are currently two competing plans to establish an agency to represent the interest of athletes. The first is a traditional trade union being promoted by a group of elite rowers and cyclists. The second is an agency established and funded by High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ).

As is often the case, the dispute over representation is laying bare the stark avarice for power at HPSNZ. Its leader, Raelene Castle, is acting with all the blunt force of an old-fashioned union buster. In my opinion she has no interest in justice for Olivia Podmore or Alan Thompson, or Aimee Fisher, or me. This is simply an “Amazon-style” grab for power.

Johannsen makes the valid point that of particular concern in the HPSNZ proposal was this Raelene Castle gem. The new agency they said, “would need to take a “collaborative approach to public statements/media” and “support and enhance existing HPSNZ or NSO escalation systems/processes”. In other words, it would not be a union at all. It would be exactly like the rest of their stinking organisation – like Canoeing, Cycling and Rowing – a bought and paid for public relations propaganda vehicle for the Castle mob.

I am certainly not comforted by hearing one of the highest paid people in New Zealand sport say we need the athlete’s representatives to sell our current systems and processes. Castle seems to have no idea it was her people that provided the money for Olivia Podmore’s bribe. It was her people that refused to provide me with the swimming Marris report. It was her people that supported the scheme to get rid of Alan Thompson. And she wants a union to promote, without question that litany of dishonesty. All I can hear is, “spear or arrow, how would you prefer to be hunted, it’s your choice.”

And at the end of the day with Castle, it all comes down to money – someone else’s money. Johannsen reports that, “Castle stressed the new organisation would be independent. “We agree that it needs to be organisationally separate, which it is, the reality is that unless there is financial support from HPSNZ, there is no other way for this athlete group to be funded.”

That Castle utterance must rate as one of the most moronic things I’ve heard in a while. The new athlete’s organisation must be separate but will publicly support HPSNZ’s policies and will be paid for by HPSNZ. That sounds really independent to me. That sounds like a good union capable of holding Castle to account. That sounds like a union that could threaten an athlete’s strike a month before the Commonwealth Games. That sounds like an organisation capable of demanding more money and improved conditions for athletes. I doubt Keir Hardy would identify Castle’s quango as an example of all that is best in trade unionism. Anyone who believes Castle’s nonsense, I have a really nice house in the Russian quarter of Donetsk to sell you.

In the meantime kick another Castle grab for power into touch and get behind those rowers and cyclists who are doing what’s needed.