I thought Swimwatch readers may be interested in the progress of the only refugee swimmer competing in New Zealand – Eyad Masoud. His story puts into perspective the pampered, simpering, anguish we have heard recently from some New Zealand coaches and commentators. Eyad’s story is what real difficulty looks like. The other lot don’t know how lucky they are. Spoilt brats do not do swimming any favours.

They rip into Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) without a care in the world for the destruction they cause. Believe me in comparison with the National Federation where Eyad came from, SNZ is brilliant right now. Eyad has experienced more good will from SNZ in four years here than he did in 21 years in Saudi Arabia.

For example, because of his nationality, Eyad could not swim in any Saudi public pool. I managed to get that changed, but he still had to park his car well away from the pool and walk. Unless I was in the car, he was denied access to the pool carpark. In the 14 years before I arrived, he had been coached by 14 different coaches. Not because he wanted 14 changes but because the coaches were instructed to avoid foreign (Syrian) swimmers. He could not compete in Federation run meets. He was restricted to school and university competition. That limited him to about 6 races a year. The Saudi Federation made it clear he could never be selected in a Saudi national team. The boss of the Federation was a Mormon New Zealander married to a lady with a Māori background. But he was quite happy to enforce blatant racism. In addition to all that the very real spectred of being caught up in the incredibly sad Syrian war was a constant presence.

Here is a story from my time in Saudi that illustrates the tiptoeing over broken glass people like Eyad had to endure. When I first heard Eyad was going to be denied access to the pool carpark I went to the guards at the gates and demanded that Eyad translate every work I said.

“You bastards do not stop my swimmer using the pool carpark. Open the bloody gates now or I’ll drive Eyad’s car through the f—ing things.”

I could tell from Eyad’s soft Arabic that his translation was far from literal. But, on reflection, Eyad had much more to lose than me. We eventually agreed that as long as I was in the car access would be allowed. Eyad on his own – no way.  

In short, the prospect of Eyad exploiting his swimming talent was nil. And so, when I came back to New Zealand Eyad applied to be a refugee here and came too. But his swimming career still faced problems. Eyad simply lacked the fitness and techniques that swimmers here are taught from about 7 years of age. He had talent, more than you could imagine, but none of the skills necessary to nurture that talent. We had to start from the beginning. And so, in the past four years, we have been through a 1000 stroke correction lessons, dozens of tough aerobic sets like 100×100 every Saturday and main sets of 2×3000 or 4×1500. Only the most conscientious would survive. But survive Eyad did.

Lydiard always said a transformation like Eyad’s, even for the most talented, would take four or five years. I think Lydiard may well be right, again. Overnight success takes four years.

We are halfway through Eyad’s 2022 summer season. Here is how things have gone. His racing plan was to swim 28 races. In Saudi that would have taken five years. So far Eyad has swum 19 races, 7 (37%) have been in personal best times. The table below shows Eyad’s personal best long course times swum this season

Event	New PB	Previous PB	% Improvement
50 Free	24.05	24.23	0.7%
50 Breast	31.77	32.63	2.6%
100 Breast	1.14.03	1.22.69	10.5%
50 Back	31.56	32.63	3.3%

So far so good. The American Swim Coaches Association taught me to look for an annual improvement of 3% – or 1.5% per season.

Eyad now has three big weekends coming up – two at the Auckland Championships and the third at the New Zealand Open Championships. In these meets he will be focusing on his best events, the 50 free and fly and the 100 free. I wish him well. He has come from a long way behind and has earned all the success in the world.