By David

I love swimming’s annual World Cup tour. A year or so ago, it sounded as though FINA was going to drop the whole thing. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. This year, there are meets in Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Russia, Sweden and Germany. Since 1990 I’ve been to about 40 World Cups in eight countries. And they’re all good. They seem to produce an atmosphere of enjoyable competition that other meets usually fail to match. The closest non-world cup competition gets is the annual Monaco, France and Spain Mare Nostrum series.

The internationalism of World Cups and Mare Nostrum helps; the fact that both tours involve elite athletes from a dozen or more countries. The fact that this special and diverse group eat together, compete together, live together and travel together for two or three weeks gives these tours a special aura that the Grand Prix series in the United States and one-off invitation or championship meets have not been able to replicate. Certainly most of the swimmers I’ve taken on the World Cup or Mare Nostrum circuits swear by the experience.

Jane, who edits Swimwatch posts and writes some entries of her own, attended her second World Cup meet in Hong Kong when she was 14. She was there mainly for the experience but swam a great 50 meters breaststroke heat and made it through to the final. I bet she remembers that to this very day. [She does :) – J]

Every year through the early 1990s, Toni Jeffs attended the European section of the World Cup. Danyon Loader, the New Zealand winner of the 200 and 400 meters freestyle at the Atlanta Games made the same journeys. Did you see that Danyon’s coach, Duncan Laing, died a couple of weeks ago? He was New Zealand’s best swim coach; a far cry from the overindulged North Shore oligarchy that run the affairs of swimming in New Zealand just now.

I cannot remember the year, but on one World Cup tour Toni was not swimming as well as she wanted. She was making finals and getting placed but was not winning or swimming personal best times. After a swim in Italy, that she considered especially bad, she informed me that this was the end of her swimming career. She was going to take up body building. I managed to persuade her to go on to the tour’s next stop in Paris and give it one more go. She did and broke the New Zealand 50 meters freestyle national record. Her body building ambitions were put on hold.

Back in those days the World Cup tour culminated in a World Cup Final. This event was the predecessor of the World Short Course Championships. In 1992 the world’s sixteen best competitors in each event were invited to contest the Final to be held on the island of Mallorca,off the coast of Spain. Toni won bronze in the 50 meters freestyle. It was a good meet for Toni. She also beat David Wilkie (Montreal 200 meters breaststroke champion) at pool in a local bar after the swimming. In fact, every New Zealand team member at Mallorca came home with a medal of some colour. No New Zealand team has done that since.

My biggest World Cup mistake was convincing Jane that, instead of boring airplanes the way to experience the series in Europe was to hire a camper van (RV in America) and drive from meet to meet. For us this involved hiring the RV in Amsterdam and in 14 days driving to three,two day meets in Paris (France), Gelsenkirchen (Germany), Imperia (Italy) and back to Amsterdam. It can be done. We did it. But when you include the distractions of taking a wrong turn at midnight just outside Lille (France) and not realizing the error for 400 miles when you noticed the signs saying “Welcome to Strasbourg”, or of bursting a tire on the German autobahn on a Sunday, or of being woken at midnight by a very drunk Frenchman who wanted you to pull his car out of some mud where he and his girlfriend had been spending some quality time. If you are ever tempted by the thought of driving across snow covered passes through the Swiss Alps, of cruising the motorway past Monte Carlo, of parking under the Eiffel Tower at midnight and of speeding past fields of German grapes and French sunflowers, remember I’m still waiting for Jane to forgive me for selling her the same vision. Don’t do it! Boring airplanes work best.

Then, of course, there was the infamous and mentioned on Swimwatch before World Cup party in a pizza bar just off the Champs Elysees in Paris; hosted by a splendid group of British swimmers well noted for their considerable appetite in party time excesses. Fourteen year old Jane was there and responded well. She rang me at 3.00am to declare that she had just found a fizzy drink she liked. “It is” she said, “called champagne.”

You may be wondering why I’m indulging in all this talk about the FINA World Cup. This year, an Aqua Crest swimmer, Skuba, heads off to swim in the European meets. It’s a bit far for an RV so we’ll be going by airplane to Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin. It should be fun. We’ll let you know how it goes.

By Jane

Update: In case this is coming across the wrong way, I’m completely convinced that 99.99% of athletes, including Phelps, are clean. This is a report on the sad things I hear other people, who rarely know much about sport, say about elite athletes.

The obligatory two weeks where the Whole World cares about swimming, diving, track, volleyball and gymnastics are over. It was fun, wasn’t it? Your classmates or coworkers knew the names of your country’s best swimmers, plus the names of a fair few other countries’ athletes. Americans and Britons watched swimming instead of football. New Zealanders set rugby aside to watch their men’s 4×100 medley relay place fifth in record time in the final. Australia did what it always does.

However, when I got back to work the week after the swimming was over, I heard some disturbing things from some of those people who rarely take notice of swimming. It turns out that a lot of them think our sport’s best athletes are cheats. And their assumptions are terribly misguided. It’s also tough to argue with “knowledge” that has no basis in fact.

The top 6 things I’ve heard from non-swimming fans about swimming’s recent rise and rise are thus:

1. The drugs are now so good that they can’t be detected.
   According to public wisdom, swimmers now have super-drugs that haven’t made the list of banned substances.
2. The chemists are so good that they can time swimmers’ drug consumption so as not to be detected.
   People cite Jessica Hardy’s positive drug test when using this excuse. Why, they say, did the substance only show up once in a batch of three tests? I don’t know the answer to this and neither, it seems, does anyone else.
3. The suits did it all for them.
   I call this the Craig Lord reason. According to Lord, and a fair few others, the Speedo LZR suits are the primary reason for the number of world records broken this year.
4. The pool did it all for them.
   Commentators talked a lot about the design of the Water Cube’s water cube and that’s led people to think that a three meter-deep pool, as opposed to a two, has given athletes an extra advantage.
5. Administrators are in on the cheating.
   I hadn’t even thought of this one, but when it looked like Michael Phelps had been touched out by Milorad Cavic, several peoeple threw around the idea that Phelps’ win was orchestrated in order to assure the American’s eight gold medas. Even some conclusive video evidence didn’t seem to convince people that there is a reason why coaches advocate not gliding into turns and finishes.

   This theory has been around for a while. I sincerely hope it doesn’t take place in swimming.

6. All of the above.
   We can thank both the cheats within our own sport and a number from sports like cycling and baseball for this, but many people are simply bored with the rumours and uncertainties. They have fully accepted that everyone who does well is cheating to some degree. They don’t care that Dara Torres, Phelps and many others volunteer themselves to the most rigorous, in-depth testing programmes available to science. They don’t have chemistry, sports science or physiology degrees but they’ve made up their minds about elite sport.

I fall into the camp of trust. I don’t believe that a majority of swimming’s fastest participants are taking drugs or engaging in any other form of cheating. The suits will be helping, as will the depth of the pool, but neither of those two things is covert and neither is against the ruels. You’ll also notice that quite a few swimmers weren’t wearing Speedo LZR suits and also swam very well: Although Arena, TYR and other brands came out with new, advanced technology, none receieved the praise or the criticism of the LZR.

People say Dara Torres can’t be that good because she’s too old. They say Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm can’t be that good because they’re too young. I don’t believe that either of those things are necessarily prohibitive to athletic success. Age is a concept that we put in place to explain people’s successes, but it really means far less than we think.

Only once have I been completely convinced that I was looking at a drug cheat, and even then, I can’t be sure. It was 1999 and I was in Imperia, Italy, at a World Cup meet. I was in the women’s locker room and I heard someone begin talking behind me in Chinese. It was definitely a male, and a male with a deep voice, at that. I spun around, only to find two women talking to each other. The one whose voice I’d misplaced as male was built like a bulging weight-lifter from the waist up and was covered in acne. She fit every stereotype we have about steroid users. I don’t know her name or what happened to her, and again, I have no proof. And neither do sports fans who have suspicions about today’s swimmers, but it is still a common perception that advantages and cheating exists. The question is how to change elite sport’s damaged and unwarranted image. Expect to hear about it again in four years when swimming (and track, and cycling…) catches the public eye once more.

“If Concrete Could Burn.”

By Jane

Not long ago, we published our list of what we view as the best pools in the world. It’s a biased list in that the pools were chosen for various reasons, including their strangeness (Leeds), location (North Sydney), history (Newmarket; Rome) and sentimentality (Long Beach). But for every stunning aquatic centre, there is its ugly, over-chlorinated twin. Thus, we bring you the worst pools in the world… it turns out that they’re mostly in New Zealand, but we’ve simply not visited any real shockers elsewhere.

Clive Memorial Pool
15 Farndon Rd, Pakowhai, 4102, New Zealand

If concrete could burn, it would smell like the Clive Pool. Imagine it for a second. Old, dirty concrete, soaked in chlorine, on fire.

Windowless. Airless. They’ve added some windows since I last visited, but I doubt they’ve added oxygen. The starting blocks were rough slabs of concrete. The picnic benches to the east side of the pool were buckling under decades of dampness. The water was murky like a sick Seattle morning when the Space Needle is invisible in the fog. Underwater, I had the feeling I was swimming in blue milk.

Blue, concrete-infused milk that, at some point, had been on fire.

The weird thing about my relationship with the Clive pool was that I completed some amazing workouts there. I swam repeats of 3,000 metres faster than I ever had before in 81 degree Fahrenheit water. I first broke a minute for 100m freestyle there. When my best time for 100m breaststroke was something around 1:15, I completed a time trial in 1:12.

At least part of my successes between 1999 and 2002 were due to training sessions swum at Clive and I’ll never forget some of the good times David and I had driving from Napier, listening to our Nissan’s bitchin’ stereo, on our way to Clive for some swimming. That I had some good times there, however, does not negate the fact that Clive is definitely one of the worst pools in the world.

Lloyd Elsmore Leisure Centre

Admission is free. That should have been our first warning. More than once, we made the mistake of stopping at Lloyd Elsmore to train after the Auckland Championships. Why did we not drive to Papakura or Newmarket? I suppose convenience was our only excuse.

The pool is hot. Really hot. There are fast, medium and slow lanes, but the lane speeds aren’t enforced and the lanes are possibly half the size of a standard Olympic width. Frog-leg, 1950s breaststroke is the order of the day, whilst children pour over the lane ropes from the play area. A chronic language barrier means that no one in the pool can understand each other which, with the overcrowding, makes swimming there somewhat like navigating a Christmas sale in a foreign country.

Raumati Pool
Marine Parade, Paraparaumu Beach, 5032, Raumati, New Zealand

Do you like filth, weird hours and draconian life guards? If so, Raumati is the place for you. Let me refer you to the case of a swimmer at Raumati who was banned from the pool for flip turning. Tumble turning. Doing this. I quote:

“Here I am one quiet morning empty lane plodding up and down my last training session before Rotorua half ironman. just a 2km quicky. I get stopped 6 or so lengths into it and told “get out you are tumble turning”. I later find out (after xmas) that I have been banned for tumble turning. this has to qualify for pool rage only problem I can’t rage about it in the pool now. Any suggestions, help, is it legal, can pool staff enforce ban. I am not a happy swimmer having to travel some distance to another pool (strangely enough run by the same council – go figure).”

The thread I’ve link to documents the swimmer’s ban, at the hands of the Kapiti Coast District Council, which was initially for two years but which was reduced to six months and then overturned entirely. The grotesque crime – flip turning – was apparently not forbidden at the pool, but an overzealous pool attendant simply decided that the technique got on his nerves on that particular day. Other swimmers – including myself – have flip turned at Raumati. The pool even has a swim team. The sad thing is, this is just an extreme example of the normal idiot fodder from small-town pool attendants and city councils.

I seriously hope you’re not thinking about tumble-turning…

Napier (Onekawa) Aquatic Centre
Maadi Road, Onekawa, Hawkes Bay 4110, New Zealand

Firstly, I’d refer you to our ancient Napier Pools Guide, which rates the Napier Aquatic Centre, formerly known as Onekawa, as a miserable failure. Everything that Raumati does, the Napier Aquatic Centre can do worse.

A personal view of the Napier pool’s misgivings: For a long time, I had no good idea why I had such trouble breathing at night. I’d have awful coughing fits and difficulty regaining my breath, but I didn’t have asthma or any other distinct respiratory ailment. I also suffered from a curious light sunburn on my face year-round. Literally two weeks after I stopped training at the Napier Aquatic Centre, having moved across the Pacific to Pullman, Washington, both the cough and the burn were gone. It was the water at that pool.

Again: no ventilation, no windows, no pool rules and a generally aggressive, retarded staff. The water spelled bad. Not like Clive’s concrete, but like a dirty bath. Patrons used the backstroke flags as clothes lines. Junk food, dropped on the pool deck, was never cleaned up. The place was putrid.

King County Aquatic Center, aka Federal Way
650 SW Campus Drive, Federal Way, WA 98023

What? Surely the King County Aquatic Center doesn’t belong on a post about the world’s worst pools? Whilst in a very different league to the above, Federal Way makes the list out of pure boringness. Wet tea-towels are more inspiring. No one could have built a more personality-void, bland shell of a pool if there had been a bland-pool-building competition.

The pool produces great swimmers. There is, in fact, nothing inherently wrong with it, aside from its epic boringness. But its boringness is its downfall.

By David

Three months after Reginald Woolmington married 17 year old Violet Woolmington, she left him and went home to live with her mother. Reginald was not best pleased. He cycled to his mother-in-law’s house and shot and killed his young bride. At the trial Reginald claimed he did not intend to kill Violet. He planned to scare her by threatening to kill himself. Accidentally the gun went off shooting Violet through the heart. The trial judge ruled that the case was so strong against Reginald that the onus was on him to show that the shooting was accidental. The jury agreed. On February 14 1935 Reginald was convicted and sentenced to hang. Reginald, however, was not done. He appealed the case to the House of Lords and he won. In articulating the ruling, Viscount Sankey made his famous “Golden Thread” speech:

“Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt subject to what I have already said as to the defense of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception.”

Reginald’s conviction was overturned and he was acquitted; the first beneficiary of the “Golden Thread” that was to become known as “innocent until proven guilty”.

Today, many modern democracies include the right in their legal codes and constitutions. Although the Constitution of the United States does not cite it explicitly, the presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the 5th, 6th and 14th amendments. In Canada, section 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states: “Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

In France, article 9 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, says “Everyone is supposed innocent until having been declared guilty.” And if all that is not enough, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 11, states: “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which they have had all the guarantees necessary for their defence.“

Given all this history and universal acceptance, why on earth did Chuck Wielgus, Executive Director of USA Swimming say the following?

“Within the culture of swimming, if you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing, we want to catch you and throw you out of the sport. In other sports, it’s about excuses and justifications and being innocent until you’re proven guilty.”

I never thought I’d see the day when a fundamental human right was so scorned by a public official. Surely Wielgus is not supporting the idea that, in swimming, an accused is guilty until he or she proves their innocence. If he is, then thank God that view is not running the country. I did notice Wielgus was also reported as saying;

“Our athletes are like All-American kids. If you align yourself with them, you don’t run the risk of athletes being found in some strip club in Vegas.”

In fact of course swimming has had its share of mishaps; DUI convictions, social drug busts and now Jessica Hardy has a performance enhancing problem. It was always likely the Wielgus “cleaner that clean” position would bite him on the bum. And sure enough it has. This is what he had to say about Jessica Hardy’s positive test:

“We are hopeful the matter will be resolved expeditiously. Out of respect for the hearing process, USA Swimming will have no further comment at this time.”

I see, suddenly the hearing process becomes important. We are not quite so gung-ho about “throwing you out of the sport” or quick to abandon basic rights such as “innocent until proven guilty.” The change is not so much a flip flop; more of a tumble turn.

And thank goodness for that. Certainly Hardy deserves all the protection the sport and the law can offer. She may have been denied the right to challenge for a gold medal; she should never be denied the right to her “Golden Thread” of justice.