The issue of shallow competition pools has caused me some strife. It began in Hamilton’s Te Rapa Pool. They used to start 50m races from the shallow end. It was dangerous and very unfair on sprinters wanting to qualify for major events at National Championships held in Hamilton. The pool depth meant swimmers had to change their starts to a very shallow, short and slow start. At the time I compared it to asking Carl Lewis to run a 100m world record up hill on a muddy path. I lodged a protest about the pool depth. It was declined. I was told to go away and stop making trouble. I was told it was up to swimmers to adapt their dive to the depth of the water, not SNZ’s responsibility to provide a legal and safe pool.

Several years later Wellington’s Kilbirnie Pool and I had the same problem. Two of my swimmers had scraped the floor of the pool diving in at the start of a race. I was told about another swimmer who had lost teeth diving into the same pool. The pool clearly failed to meet the FINA minimum depth standards. The pool was dangerous. At a National Championships I protested the depth but was again told to go away. I appealed the decision and was told to stop making trouble. The FINA requirement, they said, was only a recommendation, not a requirement. There was no understanding of the importance of an intact spinal cord.

Even more recently I protested the SNZ decision to sign Lauren Boyle’s World Record certificate confirming that the Kilbirnie Pool met all FINA’s standards. That was clearly not true. The pool was below the minimum depth. My intention was not to detract from Lauren’s record. If anything the depth of the pool made her record even more commendable. The intention was to highlight a SNZ lie and to draw attention to their stubborn insistence on starting races from the shallow end of the Kilbirnie Pool.

I have some guilt over this issue. I have an uncomfortable feeling that the louder I protested the more tenacious SNZ became about continuing to use the shallow end no matter what the risk. The one rule highlighted in SNZ’s Code of Conduct is never agree with David Wright about anything. If I said the Titanic had sprung a leak, SNZ would book a ticket on the next voyage.

SNZ was furious at my protest. The then Chairman of SNZ Layton even dedicated a portion of his Annual Report to slagging me off. Minor things like pool depth, injuries, rules and the truth did not appear to be a SNZ concern. This is what Chairman Layton said about me in his Annual Report.

For years SNZ’s response to swimming pool safety was led by a Woodstock of the mentally impaired. But eventually SNZ got religion. It took a while but the risk of spinal injury eventually dawned on Antares Place. Races now start from the deep end of the Kilbirnie Pool; a decision that should have been made years earlier. Consider the thousands of swimmers who have been put at risk by the refusal of SNZ administrators to do what was right.

Because SNZ, because ex-Chairman Layton, here is a report from the NZ Herald this week that offers you all the credibility this cause deserves. Here is why we never accepted your stubborn refusal to do the right thing.

I have spent far too much time discussing swimming politics. That can be a serious problem. I remember the great Nottingham Forest football manager, Brian Clough, being interviewed on the BBC. For half an hour he was asked about the qualifications of the England manager, the transfer fees being paid to the League’s best players and the attendance numbers at football matches. Finally Clough, who had clearly had enough, said, “We’ve been talking for half an hour and haven’t passed a football yet.”

Swimwatch may have fallen into the same trap; a mountain of talk about administration, hidden reports and wasted money and nothing about how best to swim a few lengths of a swimming pool. The best coaches I have known, Jelley, Lydiard, Laing and Schubert, would never make that mistake. Sure, they took an interest in the politics of sport but how to run or swim fast was or is always their principal concern.

And so let’s “pass a swimming football”. Many times I have called these four coaches to discuss a training problem. Many times when Jane had a training problem I would give Lydiard a call. When Toni was preparing for the World Championships I spoke to Laing every week. When I was in Saudi Arabia I called Schubert several times to ask his opinion on the training of a good 400 IM swimmer. A week ago I called Jelley for advice on Eyad’s preparation for the Auckland Short Course Championships. His advice clearly worked. Eyad won the Auckland 50 freestyle title in a personal best time.

But what I want to talk about is an interesting feature common to all four of these master coaches. It has been consistent over many years and is equally characteristic of all four.

Always, that means without exception, for over forty years, when I had a training problem or when I asked Jelley, Lydiard, Laing or Schubert for training advice they quietly ordered the same prescription.

In their own way they would say, “David, back off, take it easy.”

I have to confess many of my calls were made in the expectation of hearing how to make the team swim harder. Harder is better, right? Evidently not. Not if you believe these four world class coaches. A week ago, when I spoke to Jelley about Eyad’s training, I was concerned that Eyad was not sharpening up as quickly as we wanted. I explained the problem to Jelley who said he thought Eyad might need a rest.

“Wow,” I thought, “Here was I thinking about a few more sprint sessions and instead I’m being told to rest.”

However Jelley knew what he was talking about so I said Eyad would have that afternoon’s training off. “No,” said Jelley, “give him the rest of the week off.”

That blew my mind. But Jelley’s advice has always worked before. Eyad had the three days’ rest. And, as I have said, a week later he is the Auckland SC 50 freestyle champion. Thank you Arch Jelley.

But, isn’t it true? So much of coaching is made up of stories about how tough we are. According to the stories Lydiard was forever running around the Waitakere Ranges. Schubert was the master of 20x400IMs on some ridiculous interval. Even my coaching has been characterised as an endless procession of 100x100s on 1.25 or 10k straight swim time trials. I have no idea what Swimming New Zealand training camps are like today but several years ago they were journeys into a world where national coaches sought to prove how tough they were. I remember Toni Jeffs walking out of a Swimming New Zealand training camp when the national coach demanded she did a 400 butterfly warm up. Looking back on it, I think she was right.

So many coaches seem to forget that athletes get stronger during the recovery between training sessions. Anyone can kill an athlete. Not everyone can coach a champion.

When Alison first started running she went from being a university student with a packet of Benson & Hedges close at hand to ten weeks of 100 miles a week in just 7 weeks – one week of 40 miles, then 50, then 60 and so on up to 100 and then 10 weeks of 100. After that, no wonder she raced slowly. When Jelley added his coaching input it was to back-off from my harder-is-better policy. A few years later Alison was a NZ record holder and UK national champion. Thank you again Arch Jelley.

Lydiard enjoyed hearing about when I was 15 years old and was given his book, “Run to the Top” as a Christmas present. I thought this is easy, run 100 miles a week for ten weeks and the Olympic Games is mine. I’d never done any running before but set off and jogged through 14 miles. I did the same thing for 6 more days and then a longer run on Sunday – 100 miles on week one. I could barely walk at the end of it but that wasn’t the point. Being tough is what mattered.

Years later I also showed Lydiard my hand-written notes in “Run to the Top” where I had altered Lydiard’s schedules to make them longer, faster, tougher by far. He laughed.  I’m not so ridiculous these days. Thanks to the consistent patience of the four coaches, who have offered me their time and advice, I have learned the advantage of, “take it easy”.

And just as important it’s been good to kick a swimming football around for a change.