In our countdown of memories from the decade past, we have reached our top 10 with a difference. Today we consider the impact of the world's leading swimming nation on the a rise in standards of swimming and coaching around the world - and in the boardroom, with a nod to  the stance taken by the USA when FINA's executive proved incapable of grasping the nettle on an issue that threatened to change the very identity of the sport

No 8: God Bless America

One of the most striking things about the past decade in the race pool is the growing geographical spread of world-class swimmers. Olympic, world and continental champions can now be found in Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Croatia, Serbia, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Brazil, South Korea and a fair few others; extend the thought to the club of Olympic and world finalists and you find Kenya, Argentina and Singapore at the tip of an iceberg of progress in standards. 

Not all of those pioneers have headed West when panning for gold but a very clear pattern is undeniable: the United States of America, the world's leading swim nation, has guided, coached, inspired and even funded in some ways and cases, the spread of swimming excellence around the globe. 

 At the surface of a deeper picture, a quick count of Olympic medals at the past three Games reveals that a quarter of all medals that were not won by Americans and Australians were claimed by swimmers based in the USA. Over the three Games of the decade, Americans and Australians accounted for 145 medals across all solo events, the rest of the world combined 123 (more than three medals were handed out in some events in the case of ties).

 Beyond permanent train-and-study residency that extends access to top facilities and coaching to many who would not be able to enjoy the same provision back home, the USA also serves as a constant pit-stop for those, swimmers and coaches, heading out in search of sun, science, the right training environment and the knowledge required to compete at the highest of levels. 

  A visit to the ASCA World Clinic in Fort Lauderdale last September served as a reminder that the US, long a magnet for all those seeking to understand how best to take on the best in the world and win. The US is not the answer for everyone, of course, but its broad appeal is clear and undeniable - and here are some of the reasons why that's the case.

Constant striving to find new solutions to problems old and new

USA Swimming President Jim Wood noted at his federation's 2009 Convention that US colleges and the NCAA system have not only played a critical part in the development of US swimming but world swimming. The lists of those who excel in NCAA competition is flooded with overseas internationals, many of whom, as we noted above, have gone on to claim big medals at continental, world and Olympic levels. So far so good. But what about those who are not part of that system? 

The US has of late started developing centres of excellence for those who are not involved in the college system, a move typical of a no-stone-left-unturned approach to excellence. If attention is being focussed at the pinnacle of elite racing, Wood's comments in the US media at the time of the Convention and the coach-supportive speech made by Chuck Wielguss, USA Swimming chief exec, at the American Swimming Coaches Association World Clinic in Fort Lauderdale indicate that the USA federation recognises that just as important to the NCAA system as the NCAA system is to the wider picture is the source of future talent. 

All good and well to have a phenomenal talent from South America, Asia or Europe turn up at your pool (after same serious recruiting pressure in many cases), quite another to make a swimmer from scratch, to work with a super-talent and see that talent through. Many coaches fall into that catergory - and not only in the US, of course. Two still permanently on deck in the US stand out: Bob Bowman, for obvious reasons as manifested in the greatest swimmer of all time (for you still have to hit the right notes, and those notes can resonate far and wide, as head US coach Mark Schubert noted in 2007 and 2008), and Eddie Reese, for obvious reasons down more years and through more generations than he may care to recall, though the few times I have met Mr Reese have led me to believe that he may well see those long years as treasure not toil.

Each season, colleges are graced with an intake of swimmers who have already been moulded for success back in their home programmes by coaches and parents who rarely get credit for any achievements further down the line. Some of those unsung heroes, along with much-heralded heroes, were to be found milling about the ASCA World Clinic and soaking up knowledge in the lecture halls before returning home with enthusiasm and vigour for their sport renewed. 

The world clinic is surely a must for any coach who wishes to understand more about why the USA leads the world in the race pool. Some made a date in their diary for Indianapolis 2010 before they had left Fort Lauderdale 2009. Little wonder. It is a feast of many course. If one lecture, speech or presentation leaves you cold, then go next door, or try one level down, or buy a ticket to the US Olympic coaches dinner, go to a book signing given by a champ, speak to product manufacturers, merchandisers and marketeers. Here is the university of swimming, if you like. A place where it is down to you when it comes to finding what you can get out of it. 

At Oxford and Cambridge, the towering halls of academic excellence are more meaningful when taken in the context of the wider environment in which those lucky enough to pass through can draw from. So it is at the ASCA clinic. I enjoyed some of the lectures and presentations but the after-dinner speeches of some of generations of US head Olympic coaches - Stan Tinkham, Don Gambril (he forgot his pants that night but looked pretty cool in his tux from the waist up), Peter Daland, Jack Nelson, Mark Schubert, Eddie Reese and Jack Bauerle - the chats with so many great swimmers and coaches sitting at tables to the left, right of you, the inspiring conversations to be had from Forbes and Ursula Carlile, with enthusiastic young coaches just setting out on their big adventure, with Brian Goodell and many others ... well, let's just say this: I have travelled to places far and wide over the past quarter century or so in as a swimming reporter and nowhere has the love of the sport been more obvious in the community of people that spend their lives up to their necks in water. Sad, but good too, to hear that community honouring the likes of Richard Quick, gone but hardly forgotten. The stories, the lore, the legend the memories of good and hard times - all lived out through a swimming life.

In the mid-1980s, I attended a coaches gathering in Britain and emerged wondering whether many of those in attendance actually liked, let alone loved, the sport of swimming. In the 1990s, still in Britain, it often struck me as rather sad to sit in a bar at the end of a day at a national championship and hear conversations galore about the rugby match, the soccer score, the golf tournament, the latest F1 GP, and so on and so forth, but hardly a word about the swimming. Understandable that people need some downtime, some time away from the obsession but it seemed to me that the buzz was elsewhere. 

What a difference a decade makes. The buzz is on the pool deck, in the foyer, in the hotel lobby, passing by on the street after the meet. People, swimming people, want to talk to you about ... well, swimming. Australian Bill Sweetenham liked to talk about swimming. Alot. he liked to talk about the past, the present and the future, he liked to speak about lessons one could learn from life and lives far and wide beyond the pool in order to make a difference in the pool. Invaluable lessons, and Britain is a much better swimming place for all of that, alongside lottery funding sparked by the post-Olympic-silver-medal comments of Paul Palmer back in 1996. In the US there might be a monument to such a man, not for what he did for himself and Britain and coach Ian Turner in the pool but for what he gave the next generation as the man who made the politicians take note, reminded the nation that with some serious support and will, the leap from Britain to Great Britain might not be so great.

A year after Sweetenham had left and Denis Pursley and Michael Scott had taken the wheel, Britain started to roll out the Intensive Training Centres that Sweetenham had called for as early as 2001. A new path, a stronger direction and purpose. The soccer, the rugby and all the rest is still a part of people's lives but what has changed is the excitement in their own  sporting lives. That's what good results and the serious prospect of more, beyond toil, in the midst of toil and looking forward to toil to come in recognition of the meaning and purpose that all of that brings to lives spent steeped in singular pursuit. Such models, with local variations, can also be found in France, in Germany, South Africa and in many other places. 

Back in the States and Fort Lauderdale, the buzz was where it ought to be at such a gathering: swimming. One of the critical links between the lofty and the grass routes is John Leonard, director of ASCA, maestro and more of the World Clinic. Leonard told Cecil Colwin for the SwimNews Magazine of late that coaches needed "far more say" in the governance of the sport of swimming through which they earn their livelihoods and in which they spend their lives.

The purpose is to feed a more professional attitude into the sport at administrative level.

Here is what the boards of ASCA and the World Swimming Coaches Association are committed to over the years ahead: 

John Leonard wrote to members

"In its Board Meeting of Sept. 9, 2009, the ASCA Board established a new working principle and objective to develop. “Our Board has always monitored organizations and their effectiveness in our sport, and last week decided that we feel that FINA can benefit by having direct technical input at the highest levels of the organization, which is the FINA Bureau. “, said Executive Director John Leonard while reporting on the Bureau actions. 

“We believe that many of the recent FINA decisions from the Bureau could have benefited substantially from having direct input from coaches in our sport, and coaches in the other aquatic disciplines. We’ll be looking for ways and seeking allies, to promote the finest coaches and the elite athletes in every aquatic sport, onto the Bureau level of FINA decision making”. 

“While a few people may consider this a revolutionary idea, it is in fact simply a reflection of what is already best practice in both Australia and the United States. Promotion of both coaches and elite athletes to decision making roles has been a historical part of the governance of USA-Swimming from its very beginnings and both the ASCA and WSCA Boards strongly believe it is a great model to transfer in some form to FINA, our international governing body. 

Far from revolutionary, it is evolutionary, and a natural outgrowth from the FINA Coaches and Athletes Commissions, and clearly much needed. Swimming is now a professional sport. A segment of the highest decision making body in the sport also needs to be professional and not composed entirely of amateurs”. 

The World Swimming Coaches Association (membership of which is now free to coaches around the world) Board of Directors endorsed the same set of principles.

On the issue of boosting coaching influence in the boardroom, Leonard told Colwin for SwimNews of late: "Today we are rapidly approaching the point, with the USA and Australia leading the way. Both countries have long included coaches in their deliberations, and at last FINA is also beginning to see the wisdom in this approach." 

It would be a good thing for FINA to invite a coach and an elite athlete to all future Bureau meetings. Time will tell if the international federation has the wisdom to be so bold. But in a heartening development, FINA President Julio Maglione also let it be known that he supports moves to have the voices of coaches heard across the range of committees and commissions of the international federation. All good news - but only if those voices are not just listened to but heeded to the point at which they break down what has too often been a closed door to an inner chamber (from which even Bureau members have found themselves locked out) of decision making.

The suits fiasco was a fine example. Months and months and months went by from early 2008, and even more so from autumn 2008, in which coaches, swimmers, the media, parents and others called for sense to prevail on suits. Even when the FINA Executive could no longer stem the tide and debate was allowed in official circles there was still something of the three wise monkeys about proceedings. The spring and early summer season 2009 was one of turmoil and angst for swimmers and coaches around the world: was that a world record? was that suit allowed? will these suits be allowed,. won't they? It was inept, unprofessional and unworthy of governance of one of the biggest Olympic sports, now and throughout history.

And it could all have been avoided if, after the European circus of Rijeka 2008, the FINA executive led by President Mustpaha Larfaoui had acknowledged the truth of what the shiny suits were doing to the sport of swimming: killing it in order for it to be replaced by an impostor bent on making apparel just as important as the swimmer. An equipment-based sport was born. 

It had a stake driven through its heart not because some of the most senior FINA folk wanted to slaughter the monster but because the USA did. At a time when some in FINA were still, despite the circus of it all, saying "stop talking about suits - talk about the fact that swimmers are training harder than ever before and coaches are smarter than ever before and... and ...and", many coaches and leading swimmers, from the past and present, around the world had turned the corner and were telling truth on suits: that they were making a  hugely significant difference not only on the clock but, more signifcantly, they were altering the order of things.  

As Karin Helmstaedt, SwimNews writer in Berlin, writes in the latest edition of the magazine: "... a look around confirmed the other aspect of his claim: double chins, spare tyres, and oozing underarm flesh all over the deck". The His in her words was the greatest backstroke swimmer of all-time, Roland Matthes (double Olympic champ '68 and '72 and medallist again in '76 a few weeks after an appendectomy). Matthes, an orthopedist, said: "It's interesting because so many people competing today (at the world cup in Berlin) have a phenotype that would never have brought them to swimming in the past. The suits obviously make a huge difference."

Frank Embacher, coach to Paul Biedermann, smiled when asked what 2010 would be like, saying: "Different. I think he'll have to lose some weight!" Which is what Biedermann has been working hard on all winter and will doubtless emerge the world-class swimmer he was before the shiny suits turned him into an alien threat fit to tear down Thorpe and Phelps.

The sad suits saga had at its heart a devisiveness about it: Speedo nations gained first, so those locked out, in the absence of support from FINA, responded in kind - and war ensued, with head coaches who only managed to join the arms race by Rome 2009 keen to have their new spoils celebrated and not considered in their true context of suits that were skewing the result.

Critics of the USA, Speedo and others, suggest that the US acted in the end because it saw itself beating beaten at a game that it helped to start. That argument loses much weight if you consider two things about Speedo: it did not want the roll back from non-textile to go as far as the US wanted (and achieved with worldwide support); and, had suit wars been allowed to continue, the company with the longest history in the sport would surely have hit back once more and more silliness would have ensued in the wold of a sport lost to itself.

Leadership was required on the suits issue and in the absence of sound leadership from those charged with the task of leading, the leading swimming nation stepped in at a critical moment in Rome when the fickle nature of fairness was all around. The US delegation and officials who on the ground in Rome presented the plan to bring and end to the suits chaos did a sterling job.

Jim Wood, coach and President of USA Swimming said that the vote to insert the words "or swimsuit" in SW10.7 was "very good but it's a very small step". The critical vote was yet to be taken. He believed that the proposal coming from the US with backing from many leading swimming nations and - as the vote would prove - 168 swimming countries, ought to have come from FINA itself. He described as "discouraging" the constant process of talking to FINA but feeling as if much was falling on deaf ears. "In all honesty ... that shareholders are the millions of hard-working athletes around the world. It is time for us to take action if [FINA] won't. This is a situation where ALL need to be concerned with fairness. Suits no longer help swimmers reach their potential. There has to be fairness or we have no sport."

The decisions taken in Rome 2009 have not made life easier for anyone in some respects but they have saved the sport of swimming. And that is what ought to count most - and for that, the sport has the USA to thank.

By the time Americans left Rome for home, they were working on a life in textile. Phelps and Bowman showed the way and the reason why the US often has the upper hand. As Phelps said: "You can make a thousand mistakes - as long as you don't repeat any of them." In 2010, among those ahead of the Game, US swimmers - the majority of whom see sense in and are happy with the back-to-the-future solution formulated by their federation - will get back to what generations before them were so excellent at: swimming fast, through talent, hard and smart work and a support network second to none when it comes to firing on the biggest of occasions. 

The latest SwimNews Magazine carries several articles written by several authors on the SwimNews team that points to the issues raised above. Interviews with John Leonard, Sean Hutchinson, Christine Magnuson and her college coach Matt Kredich provide insight into the American system.

The Top 100 Memories:

Part I: 91 - 100, the year 2000.

Part II: 81 - 90, the year 2001.

Part III: 71 - 80, the year 2002.

Part IV: 61 - 70, the year 2003.

Part V: 51 - 60, the year 2004.

Part VI: 41 - 50, the year 2005.

Part VII: 31 - 40, the year 2006.

Part VIII: 21 - 30, the year 2007.

Part IX: 11 - 19, the years 2008-09.

Part X: No 10 - the best 20 swimmers of the decade

Part X: No 9 - the top 10 nations