The most recent Swimwatch post began with these two sentences.

“This weekend hasn’t been the best for Swimming New Zealand. After ten years of appalling decision making the sport’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Since the story was published I have been asked, “What does that mean? I know what you mean by no one qualifying for the Commonwealth Games and no one ranked in the world’s top ten and all that stuff, but what do you mean by ‘ten years of appalling decision making’? What is the evidence to support that assertion?”

It is a perfectly valid question. No one should accuse the Board of a national sporting federation of incompetence without having a reasoned argument to support that view. So in less than 1000 words let’s try and explain. But before I do that it is proper to address two qualifications.

First there are a many distracting notions. Every second person has a theory to explain what’s gone wrong. The old timers will tell you the swimmers are not as tough as they used to be. Others will blame competing sports for taking the available talent. One Swimming New Zealand CEO blamed the coaches. They weren’t up to scratch. Some say there are not enough pools and the ones that are available are not good enough. I’ve heard it said that there is no longer any respect for rules, especially rules regarding the safety of women. Several commentators lay the blame at frequent changes in the competition program or excessively hard qualifying standards. Administrators have suggested swimming is suffering from a lack of government money. It would be easy to spend an entire post on the reasons detractors give to explain the sport’s poor performance. And by and large, all of their opinions have merit. BUT they are not the reason for the poor performance. Instead they are symptom’s that arise as a product of an underlying cause. They are symptoms of a more serious malaise. For years Swimming New Zealand has treated the symptoms and ignored the cause. The result of that is, of course, terminal.

Second, in the interests of precision, my explanation of the cause deals in generalities, in principles and in ideas. As is always the case critics will shoot holes in the explanation with a barrage of “what abouts”. These specific and probably valid exceptions should not be allowed to take away from the possibility that the explanation given here has merit.

And so with all that cleared up, here is what I believe has happened to New Zealand swimming that has resulted in the current chaos.

It was Jan Cameron who first began moving New Zealand swimming away from club-based preparation of senior swimmers and towards a centralized Auckland-based program. Using a mix of incentives, persuasion and coercion swimmers were encouraged to leave their regional home and head to Auckland’s North Shore. And it worked. Swimmers left Dunedin, Christchurch, Carterton, Napier, Te Puke and Hamilton to swim in Auckland. Jan’s club, North Shore, dominated domestic swimming.

Jan then used her success to put the case to Swimming New Zealand that her informal North Shore Club procedure should be a blue print for a Swimming New Zealand national plan. If the North Shore Club could dominate domestic swimming using a centralized training model, the country could lead the world by following the same strategy.

Swimming New Zealand bought into the argument. Working with Sport New Zealand the centralized Millennium Institute High Performance policy was prepared and implemented. And for ten years the Swimming New Zealand Board has doggedly tried to make it work. To say they have failed would be kind. After ten years, and at a cost of $15million, New Zealand has just held a Commonwealth Games trial at which no one qualified. That is as bad as it gets.

But why has the centralized Millennium Institute High Performance policy brought us to this state? What is it about the policy that causes so much harm? What is it that the Swimming New Zealand Board could not see or would not accept?

The answer is that the policy has two destructive consequences that have gutted swimming in New Zealand. First the national sole provider concept just does not work. And second the effort put into trying to make the sole provider concept work, wreaks destitution on the rest of the sport. Let’s look at each of these evils.

Understanding why the sole provider concept has been tried and rejected around the swimming world is just common sense. It is impossible to believe that every elite swimmer in the country is going to respond to one Millennium-based coach. For example I’ve heard rumours that Lauren Boyle enjoyed her time with Mark Reagan but did not get on with David Lyles. Swimming New Zealand however demanded that she accept both. Because the centralized Millennium Institute High Performance policy eliminates the choice elite swimmers must be given to choose their coach, the policy failed. One size does not fit all. In New Zealand it appeared that swimmers were being forced to stay at the Millennium Institute because of money, services or education. And that sort of coercion is never going to result in international sporting success.

But the destruction to the sport’s infrastructure has been even more serious. As the national federation’s attention and resources increasingly focused on their personal program in Auckland, club programs in the rest of New Zealand were neglected and abandoned. For example when Alison Fitch left her coach in Hamilton, her home program was denied the benefit of learning from an international swimmer’s journey. When Emily Thomas left Gisborne or Glen Ashby left the Bay of Plenty their coaches were denied the development that comes from guiding the careers of a top swimmer. Repeated a hundred times over ten years and the effect on regional coaches has been devastating.

And in addition to the devastating effect of lost swimmers the hurt has been compounded by the resources being exclusively applied to the Millennium program and by the website and media attention given to the Millennium squad. Over ten years $15million has been spent in one place that could have added untold benefits to a New Zealand wide program. On the internet the outlandish promotion of the centralized program left the clear impression that Auckland was the only place to be if you were serious about winning a swimming race. That was not only a lie, the damage it caused elsewhere was devastating. We even went through a period where Jan Cameron had Swimming New Zealand build a raised dais at National Championships for Millennium swimmers to sit on away from and above the rest of New Zealand. How anyone could believe that wasn’t causing harm is beyond me. Call a person second class for long enough and that’s what they will become.

And so that’s my take on the cause of swimming’s current problems. Repairing the damage is going to require the Board to refocus the attention of the sport on the whole national infrastructure. But more of that in our next post.

THROUGH THE GLOOM A BEACON OF LIGHT

This weekend hasn’t been the best for Swimming New Zealand. After ten years of appalling decision making the sport’s chickens are coming home to roost. The table below shows the qualifying criteria for next year’s Commonwealth Games. The table also shows the winning time at this weekend’s trials in Auckland.

So what does the table tell us?

Well first and most obviously no one qualified. I’ve been going to New Zealand trials since 1989 and it’s the first time I’ve seen no one swim a qualifying time. Take a bow Swimming New Zealand. In the 28 years I’ve been at New Zealand trials you have managed a first for the sport. In a gold mine of sporting achievement you have unearthed a real nugget. You have ruled over complete failure; total and absolute destitution.

And second, besides not qualifying, the Board have managed failure so well that the average gap between the performance of the trial winner and the qualifying time is a stunning 4.1%. In a 100 metre race 4.1% is about two seconds or four meters. That is a performance way better than just losing. That’s a real hiding. The Board of Swimming New Zealand has done something superior to any Federation in the world. They have lost better than any of us could have imagined; gold medal losers; at last a podium finish.

And third, I have read comment that the West Wave pool must be old and slow. That’s not true. The pool is not particularly well managed but as a racing facility it is blameless. At this meet the announcer, the organization and atmosphere were actually very good. The problem is the carpenter not the tools.

You would think that in the face of this trial’s disaster a pall of gloom would hang over the sport. But, it appears, every cloud has a silver lining. Because there, lifting our spirits and providing hope came the news that Alex Baumann was leaving High Performance Sport New Zealand. That is the good news. And the really good news is he is going to work for the opposition. He has joined Swimming Australia.

In spite of Paul Collins empty rhetoric that, “Under Alex’s leadership our high performance system has gone from strength to strength,” it is hard to escape the feeling that a rat is fleeing the sinking ship. So what are the facts of Baumann’s five years guiding the fortunes of elite swimming in New Zealand?

First, and most important, Baumann promoted and encouraged the policy of centralised training based at the Millennium Institute. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that the sport was failing Baumann demanded allegiance to the principle of single site elite preparation. And what were the results of Baumann’s obsession?

Well, when he arrived in 2012 Swimming New Zealand had three swimmers ranked in the world’s top ten – Boyle, Snyders and Kean. When Baumann left in 2017 no New Zealanders were ranked in the world’s top ten.

When Baumann arrived in 2012 Mark Regan was the National Coach. In five years Baumann approved the appointment of eight other national squad head coaches. That’s right, eight coaches of the national High Performance program in five years. And at the end of it all Baumann fled to Australia leaving the program’s apprentice coach in charge.

And, of course, the crowning glory, in the last Commonwealth Games’ trial before Baumann arrived thirteen New Zealand swimmers qualified to swim in the Games. In the first trial, after Baumann’s five years, no swimmers have qualified to swim in the Commonwealth Games.

In Baumann’s sport of choice, swimming, his New Zealand legacy has not been good.

I do hope Baumann brings the same level of achievement to Swimming Australia. I hope he successfully transfers his passion for centralized elite training. I look forward to hearing how the two Campbell sisters are getting on preparing for life in a Canberra Institute of Sport twin-share dormitory. And most important of all I look forward to the revolving door of new foreign Head Coaches about to lead the Australian program. Can Baumann improve on his New Zealand standard of eight head coaches in five years? We are about to see.

But back to New Zealand – what does Miskimmin have planned for Swimming New Zealand’s future? Sadly I think there will be little improvement. Michael Scott the ex-Chief Executive of Rowing Australia has been appointed to replace Baumann. What is it with this obsession New Zealand sport has for carpet-bagging foreigners? In this particular case there is an able alternative. Peter Pfitzinger, the deputy CEO of High Performance Sport New Zealand should have been promoted. He is an American but he is no carpet-bagger. He has lived in New Zealand since the mid-1990s. He was a hugely successful two time American Olympic marathon runner. He is married to Christine Pfitzinger who comes from Hamilton and successfully represented New Zealand in middle distance athletics. Compare that background with the families of some foreign imports who left me with the impression that they couldn’t wait to get out of here; back to Australia, Spain, the United States or Canada.

But there is good news coming out of this weekend’s Commonwealth Games’ trials and Baumann’s flight to Australia. New Zealand swimming must have reached the bottom. This has to be as bad as it gets. There is no further down to go. Which means, of course, from this point on things can only get better.

I was recently attracted to a headline in the Australian press. It read “Allegations of cheating, threats and cover-ups aimed at Australian Paralympic swimming”.  My interest was piqued because I knew that after Jan Cameron had finished building a failed centralized swimming empire in New Zealand she returned to Australia and began working with para swimming.

Controversy appears to have followed Cameron across the Tasman Sea. From what I read, the para program in Australia is knee-deep in a cheating scandal. One report sent to me says that a Cameron coached swimmer, called Lakeisha Patterson, may be a suspect offender.

But I confess I know very little about para sport. I can only comment on the reports I have read. According to “The Ticket” reporter Tracy Holmes there is a serious problem. Here is a summarised extract from her December 3 report.

“The Australian Paralympic movement is being implicated in global concerns about cheating, intimidation and cover-ups. Swimming Australia is the focus of allegations that athletes are being encouraged to fake the extent of their disabilities to win medals.

Those who have complained say they have been warned to back off or face reprisals.

Australian Olympic and Paralympic swim coach Simon Watkins said, “I would say just about every group that you could identify as a stakeholder in the sport is aware of certain issues like those that you’ve highlighted.”

Most of the allegations focus on what is known as “intentional misrepresentation” during an athlete’s classification procedure. Athletes are allegedly being coached to cheat the system to boost their medal-winning chances in an easier category.

One swimmer, who asked for her name to be withheld, said she knows athletes are being coached to cheat the system. She detailed the lengths her coach told her to go to exaggerate her disability.

Melinda Downie is the mother of a Paralympic swimmer who is a dual gold medallist, a Commonwealth Games silver medallist and has been awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to the sport.

Yet when Ms Downie raised her own concerns with the governing bodies — Swimming Australia and the Australian Paralympic Committee — she said she was threatened. She was told if she continued to discuss classification issues, her daughter’s team selection would be jeopardised.

She said lucrative gold medals, government funding and increased public profile are likely reasons tempting some to cheat. Swimming Australia receives the most funding of 16 Para sports from the Australian Sports Commission and its Winning Edge Program.

But Mr Anderson the CEO of Swimming Australia rejects allegations that the pressure to win gold is leading to cheating.”

It would be way above my paygrade to comment on the merit of all these accusations. They may or may not be true. I simply do not know. But what is relevant is their implication for para sport and para swimming in particular in both New Zealand and Australia. Para sport clearly needs reform; both to root out current cheats and avoid cheating in the future.

Whenever money is involved the temptation to cheat escalates; the need for vigilance grows. And para sport will not be exempt from that temptation. Already we have seen Swimming New Zealand attempt to compensate for the poor performance of open event swimmers by trumpeting the international success of para swimmers. Funding decisions will be affected. Sponsorships are on the line. Jobs depend on results. The financial rewards for “podium” finishes are high.

All the factors that led athletes to use drugs apply to “intentional misrepresentation” in para sport. By cheating and getting away with it, the athlete gets rewarded, the coach keeps his or her job and an administrator’s salary becomes easier to pay. Over three years High Performance Sport New Zealand has increased the funding of para sport from $2,155,000 to $2,400,000 to $2,500,000. The numbers involved in success are high and getting higher.

As the money goes up so does the temptation to cheat; to run the risk of having a swimmer allocated into a more severe category of disability; to gain a competitive advantage; to benefit from the “drug” of “intentional misrepresentation”.

So what is the answer?

Well clearly the answer is not to trust swimming federations or para committees to police themselves. There is way too much money involved for that to work. Asking the direct beneficiaries of the funding to rule impartially is unreasonable and certain to fail. In the case of drugs, sport established independent agencies to investigate and test for cheating. In New Zealand the agency is called “Drug Free Sport New Zealand”.

Without question the Australian reports confirm there is a need for similar independent agencies to monitor the para certification process. A commission of some sort should determine exactly how it would work and be funded. I see no reason why “Drug Free Sport New Zealand” could not be renamed something like “Fair Play Sport New Zealand” and be allocated the two functions, one of drug enforcement and the other of para classification.

Clearly para classification involves the primary function of controlling and monitoring the national classification process and ensuring it is compatible with worldwide best practice. But also the agency needs to be charged with detecting cases of fraud and imposing penalties where deliberate cheating is detected.

The turmoil in para swimming in Australia is a warning shot to para sport in New Zealand. It is clearly far better to implement policies now that avoid New Zealand having a serious problem in the future. Although New Zealand para sport has a very high reputation for honesty just now, as sure as God made little green apples, saying, “Oh it will never happen here in the future,” is not going to work.

The NZ Swim Facebook page tells me that the Commonwealth Games trials in Auckland are hostile to the presence of news media. Here is a summary of the NZ Swim report.

“Interesting to be told that media will not be welcomed at Commonwealth Games trials in Auckland, nor can they cover it remotely. There is no provision for media accreditation – meaning that no media are able to cover the event, and there is no official photographer. I was even told that press photographers will not be permitted to take photos poolside on “health and safety grounds”. It’s like swimming administrators are doing their best to ensure people do not know that swimmers are attempting to qualify for the Commonwealth Games.”

I have no idea what Swimming New Zealand or Auckland Swimming’s contact with the media has been. Perhaps NZ Swim is right. Perhaps officials at Antares Place and the Trust Stadium have actively discouraged journalists from recording the event. That could well turn out to be a smart decision. If things are as bad as seems likely to be the case, hiding the sport’s shame could well be the right decision. In the circumstances swimming could well be looking to limit its public disgrace.

Alternatively it would not surprise me if the main stream media had little or no interest in rushing out to the Henderson West Wave Pool. Newspapers, radio and especially television like reporting the news. They like exciting success. They have a nose for events the public will find interesting. With the best will in the world I could not imagine what swimming administrators would need to do to breathe life into these trials. No self-respecting journalist is going to be interested in the insufferable boredom of this event; not when they could be reporting on a social game of chess in Cornwall Park.

The really sad fact is it never used to be that way. Several years ago I used to bring Toni Jeffs to the Auckland Championships. This was not a Commonwealth Games trial – just the normal annual Auckland Championships. For three or four years I would get a call from Television New Zealand asking if Toni was going to swim. When I confirmed she was entered a camera crew would be sent to the Henderson Pool to record the event. The races were recorded, swimmers were interviewed and the whole lot was broadcast on the six o’clock sport’s news.

If the NZ Swim report is accurate swimming has fallen a long way since those days. And it is not difficult to understand why. The reasons are no mystery. In those days there was no socialized High Performance monolith. New Zealand’s best swimmers were all the product of club programs. Toni had a bronze medal in the 50 meters freestyle from what was then the World Short Course Championships, Anna Simcic held a world record and a Commonwealth Gold Medal in the 200 meters backstroke, Phillipa Langrell was fourth in the Olympic Games 400 meters freestyle and Danyon Loader was in the process of becoming the best in the world at middle distance freestyle. The media had something interesting to report.

Now that Lauren Boyle has retired, the truth is that swimming has nothing to report. And the blame for that lies directly at the door of the Swimming New Zealand Board. They have made decisions that have stripped the sport bare. There will be little to report from Henderson. Certainly nothing that justifies the cost of putting gas in a journalist’s car.

A very well-known poem called Ozymandias by Shelley should be written on the Board Room at Swimming New Zealand. It describes exactly why the press has no interest in this week’s Commonwealth Games trials.

“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

But besides poor performance there is another factor at work. New Zealand’s best swimmers used to lead interesting lives. They were the sort of interesting and controversial people that journalists enjoy talking to. Toni was sponsored by a strip club and was never backward in expressing her views. For example she would only have a glass of wine very occasionally but always crossed out the “no alcohol” clause in the Swimming New Zealand contract. She was in her mid-twenties and her social habits were none of Swimming New Zealand’s business. Swimming New Zealand did not like it but it was good for swimming. It certainly got the sport on the news. Paul Kent was equally “out there”. I saw him throw a chair at a swim meet once. Might not be exactly politically correct but at least the sport was not the personality void it is today. Swimmers like John Steel, Johnny Munroe, Ross Anderson and Nick Sanders were personalities that the public enjoyed reading about. Good heavns, I remember when Toni and I were leaving for the Barcelona Olympic Games, the farewell dinner was broadcast live by Television New Zealand, TV Three and Channel Seven from Australia. You’d struggle to get that attention today.

And once again responsibility for the sport’s personality void lies at the door of the Board of Swimming New Zealand. Mind you it’s hard to imagine the grey members of that Board parenting exciting and interesting anything.

I am frequently puzzled by the labels attached to coaches. For example some coaches are “old-school” while others earn the title “modern-scientific”. I do not agree, but you could argue that “modern-scientific” is the way of the future. Certainly the trend among swimming federations is in that direction. They love the high-flown fancy stuff. The problem is that Swimming New Zealand bureaucrats do not really understand the product. To compensate for their inadequacy they hide their ignorance in a forest of pseudo-scientific jargon. Members of this in-group are easy to identify. The language they use is amazing. I remember asking one national coach how far he thought an international swimmer should swim each week in training. Twenty minutes later he stopped talking and I had no idea of the answer. Here is an example of what I mean.

“It allows an athlete to practice the neuromuscular patterns associated with high rates of quality performance without disruption for it is known that as lactate accumulates beyond >4 mM, neuromuscular functioning is increasingly disturbed.”

I know for a fact that an “old-school” coach, like Arthur Lydiard, followed this principle. Lydiard would not have coached the bucket of Olympic gold medals if he had violated something that important. But the way Lydiard described the same thing was:

“Train don’t strain”

His classic description of interval training is probably the best example of an “old-school” coach at work.

“How far? To the next tree.

How fast? Your best effort.

How many? Until you get tired!”

The best coaches in New Zealand sport have invariably been “old-school”. I have already mentioned Lydiard. But others stand out. In athletics Arch Jelley would also be in that category. Rowing has had Rusty Robertson and Dick Tonks. Cycling had Justin Grace. In rugby Fred Allan, Jamie Joseph and probably Steve Hansen employ the proven values of the “old-school”. And in swimming Duncan Laing, Clive Power and the Waterhole Club team of Judith Wright and Gwen Ryan come from the same school.

A story, typical of Duncan Laing, illustrates the point. In addition to his swim coaching Duncan also coached rugby. One evening a junior boys’ team coach was away from Dunedin. He asked Duncan to take practice. He was going to instruct the boys on lineout calls. Duncan agreed. He asked the boys to show him what they knew. The boys lined up, the ball was thrown in and no one could catch it. Duncan abandoned lineout drills and took catching practice for an hour. And that’s the point with the “old-school”. Drill the basics. Do the simple things perfectly. Winning comes best that way.

The Waterhole Club team of Judith Wright and Gwen Ryan represents all that is best in the term “core values”. I heard last night that Judith and Gwen plan to take a less active semi-retired role in the Waterhole business. But what they have built and are handing on is very special. In a period when women in business found life a lot more difficult than today, Judith and Gwen built their own aquatic facility in Parrs Park in West Auckland. Since 1980 they have successfully coached and managed their swimming business. They say the first test of business is to survive. For thirty seven years Judith and Gwen have done a whole lot better than that.

But their swimming story is more than the Waterhole pool; more than recent life memberships of Auckland Swimming and the New Zealand Swim Coaches Association.  In the late 1960s and early 1970s Judith was one of New Zealand’s best swimmers. She was the first New Zealand woman to break 5.00 minutes for 400 meters and 10.00 minutes for 800 meters. She swam in six events in the 1970 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. She was 7^th in three events, 5^th in one event and 4^th in two events. On her office wall at Waterhole Judith has about twenty framed certificates of her New Zealand open records. Her career as a swimmer was one of true class.

And as coaches Judith and Gwen have been equally successful. Gwen’s daughter and two sons were all very good swimmers. The two boys, Daniel and Phillip, represented New Zealand in open water events. I was not living in New Zealand during Daniel’s career but I did see quite a bit of Philip’s training and racing. I would describe his career as uncompromising. In training Judith asked for a lot and Philip delivered – all in the honest old-fashioned way.

One of my best swimmers was the sprinter, Toni Jeffs. For several years Toni’s main competition was a Judith and Gwen coached swimmer called Megan Luff. I am sure the quality of that competition helped both girls progress the standard of New Zealand women’s swimming.

Of course there have been many more good athletes that have come out of the Waterhole program. But more important than swimming fast, the swimmers coached by Judith and Gwen have received something far more than instruction in the way to swim fast; far more than even the fitness and health benefits from their years of swimming the Waterhole’s sound aerobic program. Waterhole graduates have received a thorough education in a set of sound, valuable and life-long core values.

Judith and Gwen have been more than good coaches; more than good business women. In the most genuine meaning of the term they have been brilliant educators; educators of the qualities important in sport and qualities that make New Zealand the proud little nation that it is. And for that their students and all the rest of us involved in swimming should be extremely thankful.