By David

A couple of days ago, Swimwatch received an comment from Kathy Jackson. Her thoughts were in response to the Swimwatch article, “Show us the Rule”. You may remember it. We argued that swimmers were being disqualified for starting block movements that were not false starts. Swimmers were being disqualified wrongly. When that happens it is a blight on a young athlete’s swimming career.

Here is Kathy Jackson’s comment, originally posted on our article titles, “Where is the Rule.”

“My name is Kathy Jackson, I have been a Texas UIL certified official for 5 years, I am also a USA certified as a starter and stroke/turn official, and I am NCAA certified. I am the Central Regional Director for the College Swimming’s Officials Association. We have had a similar problem at our District meets involving a particular starter. I contacted the National office this morning to see how to go about requesting a rule change. I was informed that the request had to come from the state board. I have sent the following request to our state president.

I was the meet referee this weekend at the District 13 Championship meet here in College Station. We had an incident during the meet in which a swimmer was disqualified by the starter and deck referee (not me) for false start due to a foot twitch after the swimmers had been told to “take your mark” but before the starting horn sounded. We had a similar incidence with this same starter, 2 years ago.

In every event where I was the starter, if there was any movement, I would either stand the swimmers or slightly hold off on the horn until all movement had ceased. I do this at all meets, both high school, USA and College. Both USA and NCAA rules do not use the word “motionless” in their rules regarding starts instead the word “stationary” is used. I would like to request a rule change in high school swimming of Rules 8.1.1; 8.1.3 to reflect consistency with NCAA and USA rules. If there is a certain form that needs to be completed, I would be happy to fill it out.

If there are any questions that you have, please feel free to contact me.

Kathy Jackson

Cell 979-777-4217”

You will not be surprised to see that Kathy’s arguments are more reasoned and less strident than those made by Swimwatch. However there is a commonality of purpose. In the United States right now, swimmers are being disqualified for starting block movements which do not constitute false starts. Swimmers who could stand on their marks until next Christmas are being disqualified, simply because they moved their leg, their head, their arm or the pinky toe on their left foot. And that is not reason enough for a disqualification.

It is comparable to the disastrous judging that used to go on in New Zealand when the backstroke turn was first changed to a non-hand touch turn. There was no uniformity; swimmers were being disqualified in one place for exactly the same turn that was fine somewhere else. It was a shambles. Officials held seminar after seminar and still couldn’t get it right. Getting through a backstroke race was less a matter of good swimming than good luck.

Shortly after the backstroke turn rules were changed, Toni Jeffs placed second in the New Zealand Short Course Championships in the 50m backstroke. During the race, she did the worst, non-continuous, kick-like-mad-into-the-wall turn you’d ever have the misfortune of seeing. And do you know what: not a thing was done about it. She bloody well got away with it. To this day I’m not sure whether the official was scared to disqualify Toni Jeffs, or was confused after attending her fifth backstroke turn seminar.

The Toni story illustrates the inconsistencies of the time. Toni benefited, but hundreds of others got the rough end of the judging stick.

Yesterday’s backstroke turn is today’s start. Officials have a bee-in-their-bonnets about minor movements and are disqualifying swimmers when they shouldn’t. A movement does not mean a false start and should not be judged as such. It is obviously time for another seminar.

By David

The Australian Sweetenham is on his way: back home to Australia, and before the job is done. He was employed to be Britain’s National Coach, to lift the country’s swimming fortunes through to the Beijing Olympic Games. With a year to go, he’s decided to cut and run. It would be churlish not to acknowledge that his father has just died and his mother is seriously ill. Remember though, this is the guy who called on Britain’s finest swimmers to give their all in the name of success in Beijing. Sweetenham was quite happy to call into question the application of some of Britain’s finest swimmers. He was perfectly happy to demand that Britain’s finest swimmers spend their Christmas at a training camp in Wales as opposed to… anywhere else. World record holders with fantastic careers like Mark Foster and Zoe Baker got the rough edge of Sweetenham’s tongue as he slated their training habits and questioned their loyalty.

Many coaches have had to deal with difficult family problems: Tony Dungy, Head Coach of the Indianapolis Colts, for example. Faced with these problems, Sweetenham decided to run up a white flag. Dungy, in much more difficult circumstances, battled on and won the superbowl.

As soon as the going got tough for Sweetenham, as soon as wife, children and family wanted him back in Australia he was out of there, on his way home; do what I say, not what I do, was his message. He was quick to caustically demand application, work and loyalty from others, but not so tough when it came stumping up with the same commitment himself. Is Sweetenham simply a schoolyard bully? Is he a man of little substance? Were the athletes he abused actually the ones with character? Did he take cheap shots at men and women who did not deserve his abuse? He has left someone else to front the big test, which suggests these are legitimate and outstanding questions.

But Sweetenham’s has provided us all with one lasting and important legacy. He has given every aspiring international coach an object lesson in how a foreigner should not act in a strange land.

The first duty of a foreign coach is to learn and understand the culture of his or her new home. If Sweetenham’s family stayed in Australia for the seven years he was in Britain, it sounds like Britain was never his home. Therefore, and although we did not know it at the time, the game was lost before it began. Sweetenham’s task was to use his experience to accentuate Britain’s strengths. His task was not to convert Britain into a copy of Australia. This was Sweetenham’s mistake and was at the heart of Sharon Davis’ criticism. Britain did not need to be colonized in reverse. Aggressive Australian coaches such as Sweetenham and Talbot are fine in Australia; in fact they’re quite fun and highly successful. Their less than polite behavior and “call a spade a bloody shovel” attitude are understood and accepted “down-under”. But Britain is not “down-under” and it never will be.

Britain is Britain. There are many types of person in Britain, but they are not Australians. There are the loud, loutish Brits, but they’re still a different breed of person and a different type of athlete. There and there are the reserved, quiet Brits, who are not Germans and are not Kiwis. Coaches like Terry Denison, legendary City of Leeds coach, knew how to get the best out of British swimmers. There were others who knew how to do the same thing. The land of Wells, Ovett, Coe, Drake, Raleigh, Wilkie, Christie, Churchill and William Wallace do not need to be told by some upstart Australian how to win. The upstart Australian though, needed to learn that the British way of winning is different from the Australian or American way. Done properly, the British way is just as effective; but different.

Sweetenham’s job was to take care of the “doing it properly” bit, not convert Britain into an Australian or American clone. Australian sport can be brash and crass. There is a petulant arrogance about much that they do. The rugby player, George Greegan’s taunting call of, “Four more years,” to the New Zealand team after Australia beat New Zealand in the 2003 world rugby cup is pretty typical. American sport is full of rehearsed cheers and idealized ritual.

None of these things are British. Neither are they necessary components of winning. British athletes of all codes have proven over and over again that they can win, but they do it in their own way, not someone else’s. Sweetenham failed because he tried to do the wrong thing. He tried to colonize Britain with Australia’s swimming culture. His was a religious crusade. He should have identified how the Brits work, what makes them win and accentuate and grow those qualities. That’s how Lydiard did it in Finland: he made that point often. Lydiard did not attempt to turn his Finnish runners into Speights-drinking, sheep-shearing (yes, that’s shearing), Crowded House-listening Kiwis. Neither did I attempt to create Kiwis when I coached some of Britain’s best runners in the 1970s.

Because Sweetenham was not relevant, when he goes his message will soon be lost: two thousand years of British history will see to that. If he’d had the smarts to build the British way, he would have won more swimming races and created something capable of lasting after he had gone. Now, Britain is back at “square one” once more.