By David
Interest in the Swimwatch story, “Journey of the Tangata Whenua” has been huge. Understandably the injustice revealed made an impression on people everywhere. I even had a call from TV3 News asking for more details. However the story that mattered, the event of real significance in the blog was not a parent’s journey from Northland but was Swimming New Zealand’s insistence that swimmers at their Championships should continue to dive into illegally shallow water.
I don’t know how many of you saw a headline on the Stuff website yesterday. It was incredibly sad. It said, “A woman has spinal injuries after diving into shallow water at Kaiteriteri, 60km west of Nelson. The 29-year-old from Motueka nearly drowned and has serious spinal injuries after diving into shallow water at the beach, a helicopter spokesman said.” When will Swimming New Zealand get it? When will they understand that diving into shallow water is really, really dangerous?
FINA rules on the subject are very clear. Two rules apply. This is what they say.
FR 1.3 FINA Minimum Standard Pools. All other events held under FINA Rules should be conducted in pools that comply with all of the minimum standards contained within these Facilities Rules.
FR 2.3 Depth – A minimum depth of 1.35 metres, extending from 1.0 metre to at least 6.0 metres from the end wall is required for pools with starting blocks. A minimum depth of 1.0 metre is required elsewhere.
I would think most readers would read that to mean that in events like the NZ Age Group Championships the depth of the pool near the starting blocks had to be at least 1.35 metres deep. But not Swimming New Zealand. When I filed a protest about the pool depth they latched on to the word “should” in Rule FR 1.3 and said that meant the minimum depth was not compulsory. They played semantics with the safety of every child in their care. Was scoring a win over the author of Swimwatch more important than the risk of a body on the bottom of their pool? They also arranged for Chris Moller, that’s one of Peter Miskimmin’s go-to minions, and Sue Suckling to ring Brian Palmer and me, to grill us both about whether there had been some sort of collusion, some dark plot to bring down SNZ, behind the protest.
I can assure you there had not. Brian Palmer knew about the protest of course. At a National Championships protests can only be filed by the Region’s manager. As for the Moller suggestion that politics were the primary motive for the protest, that was simply bloody insulting. If they think I care more about their pathetic organization than I do about the health, safety and welfare of my swimmers then they have made a serious mistake. The suggestion says everything we need to know about the motives and ethics of SNZ.
It seems SNZ will use any ploy to avoid the duty of care for their members. However what SNZ did not count on was a main stream journalist calling FINA to ask their opinion on the depth of the Kilbirnie Pool. The FINA reply was unequivocal. There was no debating the meaning of the word “should” with FINA. They did not approve of the shallow end of the Kilbirnie Pool being used to start swimming races. The validity of our concern and our protest had been confirmed.
So what did SNZ do? For national events they altered the starting end of the pool to the deep water, southern end. But for local events they continued using the shallow end. I do wonder at the message of that decision. Is safety of Wellington swimmers not as important as swimmers from other centres? Or is it just a case that when it’s a local meet no one cares, FINA and Swimwatch are not around to notice, so we will do it all the old way?
But SNZ got caught again. A few months after my protest a young swimmer from the Raumati Club in Wellington lost her front teeth diving into the shallow end of the Kilbirnie Pool. Some SNZ official resorted to type and tried to blame the swimmer’s coach for not teaching her to dive properly; anything to avoid admitting that the pool is too bloody shallow. For the love of God, stop using that end.
One can only applaud State Insurance for dropping their SNZ sponsorship like a hot potato. In Kilbirnie, at least, water safety? Hmmm what water safety?
And so we come to this year’s National Age Group Championships. Sure enough all the individual races were started from the deep end; recognition that my original protest was 100% valid; recognition that the damage done to SNZ swimmers was unnecessary; recognition that FINA rules were there for a reason and recognition perhaps that officials like Jo Davidson, Lesley Huckins and Ross Bragg could do a better job of enforcing the letter and the spirit of the rules.
But included in the Age Group Championship program was a full schedule of sixteen 4×50 meter relay events involving 257 teams. Most Swimwatch readers will know that a 4×50 relay involves two swimmers starting from each end; two from the deep end and two from the shallow end. What that means is that, in spite of our protest, in spite of FINA’s rules and their counsel, in spite of a swimmer’s lost front teeth and in the face of their lost water safety sponsorship, Swimming New Zealand arranged for 514 swimmers to dive into the shallow end of the Kilbirnie Pool. On 514 occasions Swimming New Zealand were prepared to compromise the safety rules of their parent organization. Did they really think that was a risk worth taking?
If they did, it is irresponsible. Someone should be held accountable for that decision. There is no possibility that I was going to compromise my swimmer’s safety. Sacrificing what turned out to be a silver medal I withdrew the West Auckland Aquatics swimmer from the Auckland relay team. At six foot four inches there is no way, knowing what I knew, having coached in safety conscious America for eight years, I was going to be responsible for allowing one of my swimmers to dive into a pool that FINA said was too shallow.
Before anyone picks me up on the fact that another West Auckland swimmer did swim in a relay and did start from the shallow end. That is true and was an error on my part. I thought she was swimming third and would be starting from the deep end. It was a serious mistake on my part. If I had realized she also would have been withdrawn.
And so, while driving from Northland and not being allowed into the pool may be the human interest story of the meet, the real issue this week was the health, welfare and safety of 514 swimmers; put at risk for taking part in the sport of swimming.
