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Skills & Strike Rates Beyond Delhi Belly
Oct 10, 2010 - Craig Lord
When asked by an Australian reporter to sum up where the Dolphins are in relation to Britain after six days of racing at a troubled Commonwealth Games in Delhi, Leigh Nugent head coach Down Under, replied: "Have a look at the scoreboard. I'd think they've taken a big hit here and that they'd have been shaken by their performance here."
The most noticeable shaking we saw all week before the waters of the Dr S.P Mukherjee pool aptly turned a milky and murky shade of green was that of Fran Halsall, the English swimmer whose acute, rapid and undeniably debilitating illness, contributed to Alicia Coutts taking three solo golds for Australia in races that may well have turned out very differently (and no, that is not aimed at being unkind to Coutts, who had a terrific, breakthrough week in which she fought hard for and deserved the credit she got).
In a fair few Australian publications today, there is mention of 54 medals for Australia. That counts disability races and, without wishing to detract from the dedication and achievement of those athletes, is completely irrelevant when it comes to the count that matters in Olympic and world-championship waters: 47 medals for Australia, 38 for the Brits, 29 of those delivered by an England squad headed by coach Chris Nesbit for the squad that ended runner-up on the medals table well up on the next-best nations. South Africa is on the rise, Canada had its moments but has a big job ahead, right down to grass roots.
The 'big hit' Nugent speaks of is pure expectation Vs outcome. In reality, while Britain might have been expected to get closer than it did, the gap, nonetheless, did indeed narrow once more in Delhi. Australians had 16 more medals that the Brits in 2006, now 9. Nugent, in keeping with his role and how directors and head coaches the world over must see such things (to their advantage in whatever way you make that work for you until the drop is too big to allow that to happen), thought the Delhi belly issue not much more than media hype. All teams have a level of sickness at whatever meet you go to, he noted.
Yet there can be no question that Delhi was a meet apart, so much so that it made minimal impact on world rankings, despite a fair few Games records having been established (no world records for the first time since 1986 though that was down to shiny suits not sickness). While more than 80 swims across all Olympic events made an impact on the world top 10 for 2010 at Pan Pacific Championships, just 14 swims in Delhi wrote themselves into that realm, a reflection that at a peak moment swimmers were able to step up and do their best at one meet but not at the other.
In the mix in India, Australian men started to make gains once more, even though their solo gold medal count, at 2 (both Olympic events), still paled by comparison to any result in the past 30 years. But the Dolphins had a great meet in terms of their ability to race come what may and in terms of the strike rate when it came to getting a hand to the wall first in battles decided by fingertips.
While the relative slowness of the meet may not have been significant to Australia and Nugent, it surely is for Britain. Were medals the only measure by which funding for British swimmers heading to a home Olympic Games was counted, then all would be well. However, one of the key factors that determines levels of funding - from grass roots payments of a few thousand pounds a year through to annual grants of between £12,000 and £27,000 for the Adlingtons of the world - is time and the position that places a swimmer on the world rankings.
Among the best 20 places held by British swimmers on the world rankings across all Olympic events - the swims, perhaps, from which London 2012 medals are most likely to come, though count on the seascape shifting all the while - 16 were achieved before Delhi, in Budapest or other events between March and July. Even the likes of Rebecca Adlington and Elizabeth Simmonds, who described their tummy upsets as "mild", swam slower at an event that was supposed to produce their best performances of the year.
A sick note for all those afflicted by Delhi belly in a way that affected their worth in the world of water is being drawn up this week as part of an appeal to UK Sport designed to prevent loss of funding for London 2012 Olympic medal hopes in the last season before a home Games.
Though three of the five British women who won European titles in Budapest in July backed up with gold in Delhi, including Adlington, not a single one swam faster than they had done earlier in the year. Double gold winner James Goddard, off sick in July, was one of only a handful among the 66 British swimmers in Delhi to swim season bests (indeed, lifetime best in a fabulous 200m backstroke swim that was one of the three best efforts at the Games alongside Brant Hayden's 100m free blast for Canada and Alicia Coutt's fabulous 200 medley effort).
When British Swimming made the Commonwealth Games its official priority target for 2010 a year ago, dictating that all UK Sport funding decisions would be based on results achieved last week, it had not anticipated what Britain performance director Michael Scott described as the "extremely challenging environment" encountered in Delhi.
Pigeon droppings falling from the rafters and murky waters caused by a filtration system cited as a possible source of contamination at the Dr S. P. Mukherjee Pool, where water tests came back “negative”, joined catering at the Athlete's Village on the list of official concerns expressed by several nations. We will never know what caused the problem, though we know well what the outcome was: a feast of ambitions and possibilities, and the work behind those, washed down the pan.
Scott acknowledged that the sick list extended to "a dozen or more" acute cases whose Delhi experience ought not to dictate funding. "We've got an injuries and illness clause in our policy," he said. "I will get a report from the team doctor on every athlete who's performance was impaired. I guarantee you, and I have already told the athletes, that we have their best interests at heart. We are not going to lose six to eight years of hard work because of what happened here. If there are cases - and there are quite a few of those - then that will be taken into consideration."
There was no griping from Britain. Scott was proud of the professional way in which swimmers and coaches handled what he said was was a challenge for all nations. "It wasn't exclusive to the home nations ... they were all losing people during the course of the week so it wasn't like we were overly disadvantaged." Ashley Delaney, Ryan Napoleon were among Aussies afflicted, while no team escaped disruption at some level.
Scott, like Nugent in Delhi, was talking from a team-wide perspective. Of course, such things matter enormously to the individuals affected and indeed the impact that has on rankings and how we assess where people stand in the sport. For example, had Camille Lacourt (FRA) had in Budapest what Fran Halsall (ENG/GBR) had in Delhi, then we would not now consider him the backstroker to beat on the journey to Shanghai 2011 and London 2012. Equally, throw time out and look purely at the race and Alicia Coutts is the person who "felled", as one paper Down Under described it, the world titles silver medallist (Halsall). Of course, she did no such thing. She won the 100m free fair and square by stepping up and delivering what for her was a cracking effort but one ahead of a rival racing between visits to the toilet, a doctor by her side monitoring her fever.
"The fact is, whatever the conditions, you've got to get up and race on the day and if that impairs you we have to deal with that. We have to learn from this and make ourselves stronger," said Scott, who along with everyone else knows well that if what happened to some in Delhi happened to them in London 2012, the reason would definitely be part of the tale, for the alternative would be to write such things up as "failure". Scott was not, of course, referring to specific individuals, but alluding to the need, as Nugent did in Delhi, to work through any adversity, to keep all things on a positive note, to find a way of emerging a winner come what may, a key part of the coaching role to ensure that setbacks from and for X and Y do not knock Z, the big picture, off course.
"I was pleased that our last two days were our strongest days," said Scott. "The team showed they could get up no matter what happened. The athletes were as professional as they could be. They responded to the challenges. But so did other nations, so did Australia. Psychologically, you have to adjust to negatives."
On that score, he and Nugent speak as one. On Nugent's "big hit", there is sure to be disagreement. Scott said that on the basis of world rankings "we predicted 30 medals and set ourselves a target of 35 - and we got 38".
He trawled through some of the best performances, noted the resurgence of the likes of Simon Burnett and pointed to the gains being made by some too young to make the radar right now beyond a Commonwealth environment that allows Britain to give a much wider field experience, courtesy of the four-yearly home-nations divide and the three-per-nation format.
"That's the upside of it," he added before noting the most noticeable aspect of Britain's programme that continues to disappoint. "There are lessons in nine golds [to the 20 for Australia]: we lost a lot of close races", said Scott. "Australians showed us how to be competitors", he added, when it came to skills and getting a hand to the wall first.
A trawl through 10 of the tightest scrapes confirms Australia as the alchemist controlling Britain's fate: of those 10 races decided on a knife edge, the Dolphins won all of them over a British swimmer by less than 0.5sec in half of those cases and less than 0.8sec in all cases. An 11th race on a par was the women's 50m 'fly, one case in which gold eluded Australia, Halsall getting her hand to the wall first the night before Delhi changed the course of her destiny.
"There were positives," said Scott. "But we have got to convert those rates and we have got to improve technically, our starts, our turns our breakouts, our underwater work: the Australians showed us up," And how, in some cases. One stunning example saw a swimmer touch the wall going into a turn 0.14sec down but emerge into stroke a full body and legs behind the Aussie rival.
Former sprint great Jonty Skinner had been recruited from the US a year ago to work with athletes and coaches on just those kind of aspects, Scott noted. "We've made some improvements there but obviously we've got a way to go."
He said the Britain now had the "hunger, drive, technical backup ... and time" to get better by London 2012. "We know what we have to do now. Certainly if you look at the pure swim time [not time spent starting, turning and pushing off the wall], we're there. But we're losing on those small things that make a big difference."
Asked where Britain placed itself in relation to others on the way to London 2012, Scott said: "We are on schedule." That meant heading into a world championship in Shanghai next July with a target of exceeding the five medals won at the 2007 world titles in Melbourne (the programme operates on an Olympic four-year cycle), when British swimmers won five medals, one of those in the marathon 10km open water race. That aim sounds somewhat soft, lower than Melbourne 2007, while a tally of eight or nine medals would be a more realistic if Britain is to meet its target of exceeding at London 2012 the six Olympic medals won in Beijing in 2008.
On the pace of the meet, Nugent told Australian reporters: "They were the best times that either nation could post on the board and that's the starting point I reckon." But not one the rest of the world need read too much into other than what we already knew: Australia is the dominant force in the Commonwealth pool and remains so in a way that has lessons for all who chase.
One of the key measures of Aussie strength was there for all to see: six out of six relays, comfortably.
The champions and medals winners
MEN
50 METRES FREESTYLE
100 METRES FREESTYLE
200 METRES FREESTYLE
400 METRES FREESTYLE
1500 METRES FREESTYLE
50 METRES BACKSTROKE
100 METRES BACKSTROKE
200 METRES BACKSTROKE
50 METRES BREASTSTROKE
100 METRES BREASTSTROKE
200 METRES BREASTSTROKE
50 METRES BUTTERFLY
100 METRES BUTTERFLY
200 METRES BUTTERFLY
200 METRES IND. MEDLEY
400 METRES IND. MEDLEY
4x100 METRES MEDLEY RELAY
4x100 METRES FREESTYLE RELAY
4x200 METRES FREESTYLE RELAY
WOMEN
50 METRES FREESTYLE
100 METRES FREESTYLE
200 METRES FREESTYLE
400 METRES FREESTYLE
800 METRES FREESTYLE
50 METRES BACKSTROKE
100 METRES BACKSTROKE
200 METRES BACKSTROKE
50 METRES BREASTSTROKE
100 METRES BREASTSTROKE
200 METRES BREASTSTROKE
50 METRES BUTTERFLY
100 METRES BUTTERFLY
200 METRES BUTTERFLY
200 METRES IND. MEDLEY
400 METRES IND. MEDLEY
4x100 METRES MEDLEY RELAY
4x100 METRES FREESTYLE RELAY
4x200 METRES FREESTYLE RELAY
