Australia, swimming paradise, is in danger of taking a similar road to aquatic hell as that which Britain journeyed down many years ago - the destination is a place where the prime asset of the sport, water and lane space and time in it, is owned by people who see no commercial value in swimming training programmes.
Nicole Jeffery reports in The Australian today Down Under that the "future of Australia's gold medal-winning swimming team is being threatened by a trend for local councils to lease their pools to commercial management companies that do not see a profit in high-performance swimming".
The reporter cites the case of Olympic coach John Rodgers, mentor to Bronte Barratt and Kylie Palmer who was forced to leave the Albany Creek Leisure Centre in Brisbane last year when the local council out-sourced its facility.
When enough was enough for Rogers he up and left and is now serving Canada instead. His position, writes Jeffery, became "untenable". Australia's loss. And the local area's: the top swimmers left and Albany is now up the Creek without an aquatic paddle as far as boasting a world-class programme with matching access to facilities is concerned.
Now Swimming Australia, concerned by the trend, has hired what The Australian describes as "an advocate to lobby local councils full-time in its interests".
"We have employed someone to work with the local councils to try to ensure we have access to more water and to make sure new pools are built with everything they need for high-performance training and competition,'' SAL executive director Kevin Neil told the paper. While making gold medals may not be profitable in an obvious sense, Neil told Jeffery that if the community wanted to share in the gold medal triumphs it also had to share the cost of preparing the athletes.
His the words ape those expressed by Bill Sweetenham when the coach arrived in Britain a decade ago. Over the past decade, Britain has moved, through Sweetenham's advocacy, from a place where local councils and interest groups decided who got access to water time and when. Swimming as a sport was often last on the list. The arrival of outsourcing, under which councils handed over the running of their facilities to management groups whose interests was to make profits not champions, did nothing to alleviated a decline in swimming standards in the race pool in Britain down the decades.
Now, in post-Sweetenham times, Britain has five Intensive Training Centres up and running, programmes that have world-class coaches at the helm and who have a big say in how facilities are used by world-class athletes. While checks and balances exist, there is no management company automaton in the wings looking at its bottom line and asking "Fran Halsall - how much money does she generate for my annual bonus?'
The best solution for Britain to free itself from the control of circumstances that controlled the sport and dictated its pace and fate was to work with authorities sold on the benefits of having a world-class programme central to its raison d'etre. Loughborough University, run by head coach Ben Titley, Kevin Renshaw and swimming director Ian Armiger are cases in point, as are set ups in Stirling, led by Ian Thorpe's mentor Doug Frost, Swansea, led by Janet Evans' mentor Bud McAllister, Stockport, led by Sean Kelly, coach to Olympic and world medallists Graeme Smith and Steve Parry, both retired, Kerri-Anne Payne and Cassie Patten, among other world-class athletes, and Bath University, led by Dave McNulty, coach to Joanne Jackson before his move south and Jackson's move to Renshaw at Loughborough.
There are a few examples down the chain, so to speak, that reflect the value in owning the asset: Plymouth Leander's partnership with Plymouth College, attended by the likes of world and European champion diver Tom Daley and newcomer to the Britain team in the race pool, Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, is already paying splendid dividends.
In addition, some programmes in Britain have long had excellent working relationships with local swim programmes, coach Bill Furniss and Nova Centurion, which boasts Becky Adlington among its number, a prime example. Similarly in Australia, there are many programmes, from Institute units to those linked to private school facilities that enjoy conditions that many across the world can only dream of.
