Do athletes deserve better funding - and if so, what's the best model? SwimNews considers an issue that is set to run and run

"It is not the employer who pays the wages.  He only handles the money.  It is the product that pays the wages."  - Henry Ford, 1922.

The USA Swimming Convention is done. It was held in Dallas but, mercifully, failed to produce the kind of drama and intrigue foretold, the kind of shenanigans one might have associated more readily with the ridiculous soap opera that hailed from that Texan city many moons ago.

There was no revolution in the political line-up, no heads rolled on the dubious charge of falling down on the job of protecting athletes from the abuse of rogue coaches, nor did a challenge materialise, if it had ever truly been on the cards, to the status quo by disgruntled former officer bearers, insider traders or anyone else. 

USA Swimming has learned some lessons of late, though rarely if at all from those critics and lawyers for whom the truth of argument seemed to count for less than the chance to make mischief and money from serious misdemeanours of criminals of the kind that have long made a beeline for all walks of life where they see easy pickings, be that in church, school, sport or other institution through which the great migration from childhood to adulthood flows.

In Dallas, the USA Swimming House of Delegates backed the further athlete-protection measures put forth by the Board of Directors and agreed to "educate the membership on the issue, implement athlete protection policies, expand background screening to include all non-athlete members and require those employees and volunteers that interact with athletes, to become members and therefore undergo background checking". The House of Delegates also passed legislation that makes it mandatory to report credible information regarding sexual abuse. We assume that the top line of advice to anyone who has suffered such abuse remains: call the police, without fail, for a swimming federation's jurisdiction, while important, will always run a distant second to national laws.

"We have been committed throughout this process, to doing the right thing, and taking actions that, first and foremost, will foster a safe and positive environment for our athletes," said the USA Swimming President Jim Wood before his term in high office ended. "Our membership really stepped up today to provide their overwhelming support to this important issue."

Wood found himself leaving one top post as a pioneer - the first coach to serve as USA Swimming President, and a fine job he did too - and assuming another appointment in Dallas, as temporary head of the national team, after Mark Schubert took paid leave of absence from his job. That drama unfolded immediately after the head coach had stood up for the right of athletes to get a better rate of reward for serving as the poster boys and girls for the United States Olympic Committee and USA Swimming at the helm of one of the biggest success stories in the history of world sport.

Schubert has been told that he may have no contact with athletes, media and others while away on leave, while athletes have been told that they cannot get in touch with Schubert. In addition, it is widely believed that Schubert did not simply decide to go on an extended break but was advised to do so by those running USA Swimming. All of which raised suspicion when it comes to the motivation of placing Schubert on a kind of gardening leave. Given that USA Swimming, in common with many other organisations, has a standard policy of not commenting on "personnel issues" and given that Schubert has been placed in a place, for better or for worse (and only time will tell as matters pan out) that challenges the First Amendment, speculation was just about all that was left.

There is little question that a disagreement on how to go about getting a better financial deal for athletes arose between Schubert, a man whose achievements are much admired and deserve to be, and others at the helm of the world's leading swim federation, a unique and admirable example of a domestic swimming governing body that funds itself to a large extent through private finance sources and whose very existence does not rely on state handouts and other forms of public funding.

It is also the case that a health issue is part of the mix. And on that score Schubert has a right to privacy, assuming it is his free choice to exercise his right to privacy. Knowledgeable sources just about as close to the issue as you could get suggest that there is no conspiracy and that USA Swimming is largely in agreement with the head coach's stand on a better financial deal for athletes and is working on achieving just that. One source also said that there is no attempt to remove Schubert on a permanent basis, that sentiment emphasised with these words: "You don't sack Mark Schubert ... and we want him back doing what he's great at doing". 

One source noted emphatically that there is no "chaos" in USA Swimming or the national team, while "everyone is happy to have Jim Wood lead for a bit while Mark recovers, rests, rejunvenates". 

The timing of events, in the middle of a convention, left many to think in other directions: Schubert's move followed a meeting with the USA Swimming executive in the wake of a vote that went Schubert's way in a way that irritated some executives. Athletes were being offered a sum that would just about double their funding in return for signing a contract being touted by the USOC to all Olympic sports federation that would see athletes hand over image rights, agree to race at certain competitions and agree to promote the sport/USOC at particular times of asking. What Schubert appears to have got through is a compromise in which athletes get a little more than before but less than the top-line proposal and without having to sign a contract.

A knowledgeable source told SwimNews: "Chuck Wielgus (USA Swimming CEO) is putting together a much better compromise  package for the athletes with the USOC, that will make all the athletes - and Mark - happier. There are only so many dollars. No government funding. The USOC funding is limited. This country abhors welfare ... there is strong resistance to giving too many athletes too much ... and leading to complacency."

All true. True too that USOC is far from being poor, true too that USOC's top job is to the words "million a year" what snake's belly is to the floor (you can count on one hand - possibly one finger right now - the numbers of swimmers in the world capable of bringing in a million a year, and for that it took a stratospheric 14 gold medals and the greatest Olympic career record in sports history).  True too that half a million is spent hosting an awards ceremony at which some of the award-winning athletes get far less publicity than the non-swimming celebrities alongside them on the red carpet. That's marketing for you. Fine if the funds then flow to those who made the show possible in the first place - but what if the stars of the show earn $20,000 a year, if they're lucky? 

Sport has specific complexity born in the nature of motivation. One US source added this thought to the debate: "In the USA, first you produce at a very high level and then you are rewarded. Not, first you are subsidised and then you produce."

There is much merit in that philosophy, one that has stood American swimming in good stead for many a decade of dominance in the biggest of race pools. Pity that the same philosophy is rarely applied on the other side of the blocks in the realms of sports governance - and the solutions that have so far made the public domain will not solve a clear imbalance in what those who govern domestic and international swimming consider to be appropriate levels of remuneration and reward for themselves versus funding for athletes who have a short window in which to capitalise on any success they may have. 

Whatever change or otherwise comes out of the rest that was considered good for Mark Schubert, one thing is clear, the man's last act as acting head coach was to stand up for what he believed to be right on the most pressing issue facing athletes at a time when FINA is about to hold its 1st world convention of lofty folk who will decide what's best for the sport of swimming. We shall see soon enough what comes of that, and may we all pray for wisdom and the interests of swimming to prevail over any immediate desire for dollars, deals and development of the kind that are promoted as being in swimmers' interests but are likely to take a pneumatic drill to the foundations of the aquatics bread-winner (no, the shiny suits did not work in swimming's interests, no, the shiny suits would not have provided a stable financial future, yes, swimming could well make millions if it wooed gamblers, gamers, smokers, drinkers, pimps and pill-pushers to the front row of seats at the feast, but no, the sport does not need any of that to remain world-class and should not wish to be visited by short-term spectres that deliver long-term damage).

As Confucius would have it: "The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell."

What swimming needs is a better balance of professionals and sports politicians, an executive that does not rule on an "us and them" basis, an executive that is called to account every time it makes a substantial move (far too many key decisions, such as ruling out for consideration for constitutional change the combined wisdom and agreement of three continents, are taken by too few people without reference to the membership). What swimming needs is an executive that views athletes and coaches as the lifeblood of their existence. 

That philosophy starts where the haves recognise that the have nots who deserve more are fast reaching a point at which they will shout "no more" with the force of Phelps pounding into the pads. The "no more" that came from Superfish and his coach Bob Bowman carved a January 1, 2010, deadline on FINA's heart last year in Rome. Bodies such as the USOC, FINA, the IOC and others have reason to be wary of a "no more" from world-class athletes who find common cause in the world they see around them.

From Chuck Wielgus (more than $700,000 a year) to Mark Schubert, from Cornel Marculescu, executive director of FINA, to the heads of certain domestic federations, all are well remunerated for their work and their positions are often held for the long-term. A fair few of the fed CEOs doing well are paid in good measure from the public purse. Alongside those professionals are sports politicians often described as "volunteers", though that term has long been stretched to bursting point in two uncomfortable ways: 

• the hefty expenses and perks of the leading officials of "non-profit" organisations effectively create a wages-through-the-back-door culture (time to be upfront about it all and have public accounts that show who got what, show that there are sports officials who have made a career out of that function and live entirely off the position and spoils of that function and ought to pay tax on those spoils just like the rest of us have to - that's the rest of us who better get it right when we call a wage a wage and an expense an expense); 
• among the legion of sports politicians who get to vote on substantive issues and the direction in which sport should develop  are those who use their positions rarely for the benefit of the sports they represent and mostly for personal gain, be that the privilege and power that a position in world sport brings them or the gravy they sup on the the luxury train they ride on. Their loss would be swimming's gain.

Of course, there are also vast armies of genuine volunteers who keep the sports show on the road the world over and who rarely, if at all, get reward or courtesy extended to them. It is neither right to tar everyone with the same brush, nor to pin medals on anyone who ever "served", a word that is often used even when the truth is closer to "showed up".

Deep down in the mix of all of that is this bottom line: very, very, very few of those people above, regardless of how good or poor a job they may do - and courtesy of the very nature of sports competition - are ever exposed to the ferocious judges called "performance" and "result" that are the constant companions of the competitor. 

So, in this era of professional sport, which is the best path to take? The answer to Chuck Wielgus's salary and bonuses is not "how come he earns so much?" Envy is thin because it bites but never eats, says a Spanish proverb, or put another way, by William Shakespeare, "And oft, my jealousy shapes faults that are not". The answer is to find a better way of rewarding athletes.

Wages, prizes (FINA has made excellent progress on that score of late), medal bonuses? Which way to go? A mix of all three is, perhaps, ideal, the wage to cover living, the prize to ensure appearance and make quality racing and visibility at meaningful competitions a bigger part of the sport (a better format than the current world cup circuit would be required); the medal bonus big enough to make up for the lot of swimmers going through the ranks ("first you produce at a very high level and then you are rewarded"). 

The source who provided that quote noted the merit in not paying too much to athletes who have not yet panned for gold. An alternative view asks: did Phelps, did Thorpe, did Klochkova lose their appetite to win because their wallets grew wider than the smiles on their bank managers' faces? Did they even consider the money as they trained and then raced to do what they'd trained to do? History suggests not - and most swimmers see the water before them as the artist sees his paint. At the very moment of application, money is often the last thing on their mind.

Phelps and Co are the exception, of course, when it comes to cash-pulling power. For most swimmers, the issue is not one of riches but survival (and to compete these days often means that they cannot hold down a well-paid job beyond the pool and be a world-class swimmer at the same time), the question on many lips this: why should swimming continue to be a sport in which parents of world-class swimmers remain as chief paymasters to offspring well into their 20s, while the bodies that they promote - Olympic committees, international and domestic federations - spend a proportionally low sum on financial aid and reward for the excellence that keeps them fat (between 3% and 10% of budgets spent on direct financial athlete support is not a wild guess in the case of many leading federations, though the costs of back-up - coaching, sports science and medicine etc - cannot be ignored, particularly in nations such as the US, Australia, Britain and France, among others).

The "wage" is only part of the picture when it comes to the gulf between levels of support in the sport. Broadcast rights are counted in many millions, an eight-day FINA swim show runs to many tens of millions, top officials fly first and business class and stay in 5-star hotels, often with spouses who have no function in or connection with the sports that render them part of the rolling stock. For the most part, athletes travel cattle, they stay in 3-4-star hotels or hostels (and come the biggest moment dormitories sometimes a door beyond a noisy corridor, some Olympic villages better than others), they have a job to do that means no spouses allowed - and should they, after 6 years and more of hard labour, get a silver or bronze medal when all the world is gathered, they can look forward to ... a pat on the back and a memory (and even gold can often bring not much better), while the federation they raced for will take the medal, add it to a list of boasts and take it to a government department as dressing for their begging bowl.

In times of financial austerity, in which a new hospital wing and research into cancer ought to count for much more than a wage for a swimmer who chose to swim on a promise of nothing other than personal achievement, federations who have built their foundations on that begging-bowl model may one day wake up to the notion that they live in a house of cards. That thought is one that ought not to be ignored by international federations either, especially at a time when more and more events are being added to the calendar and fewer and fewer bidders are lining up to  agree to contracts that may result in the fate of Roma2009: a very fat debt, and that with shiny suits and 43 world records (so much for any of that underpinning a golden age of funding).

Swimming's main revenue sources at international level are broadcast rights (direct and via the IOC), partnership deals (much less than broadcast rights) and host cities who effectively pay for the cost of events from which FINA emerges in a healthy state, sometimes regardless of the ruins left behind. Rome and Montreal are examples of cities that hosted world titles in the past decade but, to one degree or another, did not cover their costs.

At domestic level, the US is unique, as we noted earlier, with most leading federations supported by public funding (that definition including lottery schemes that are ring-fenced by governments to guarantee a flow of funds into sport). Few federations find massive sponsorship deals such as those that have existed for a number of years in the US and Australia, where Telstra is reported to be on the verge of hanging up on its Dolphins deal. In Britain, British Gas puts in £15m over a few years but none of that money is given directly to the national team and the very elite end of  the sport. Though such money is hugely welcome and essential at grass roots, the sponsor found difficulty in linking its name to the fastest fish. Now, it provides personal funding to the likes of Rebecca Adlington, a swimmer who had to have two Olympic gold medals round her neck before she got the top-rate £27,000 annual lottery funding award or attracted a private contract from a suit maker.

There is truth in the fact that coaches, some sponsors and some who govern are in this for the long run, the swimmer almost inevitably someone who is passing through the realm of the racer (though international careers of 10 to 15 years in duration are more common these days). That temporary presence provides a permanent, immortal thread between generations, each passing achievement the glue that binds swimming history, lore, inspiration and aspiration, the driving engine for the conveyor belt of progress. There are arguments against having the current generation have too much of a say in shaping the race environment: swimmers, like youth the world over in many walks of life, often live in their time, the thread of history and responsibility towards it only entering their ken once they have moved on and their careers have passed from leaf to branch. 

No one argues these days that only "amateurs" may race, while swimming is more than 20 years passed the point at which an East German could accept flat, car and other privileges in return for toil and triumph without fear of international authority (fear of home rule was a thing apart) while the Olympic medallist from Britain and elsewhere in the western world was ruled out of the race pool because they got paid for giving a lesson or a lecture. 

With many, many tens of millions flowing into the coffers of the IOC, FINA, and with a few leading federations able to count their coffers in extremely large amounts (USA Swimming doing that far more successfully than any other federation when it comes to self-sufficieny beyond public handouts that may one day dry up), it is somewhat galling still to be reading and writing stories about swimmers ranked in the top 10 in the world struggling to make ends meet, whether they are in their teens (in which case it is the parents who are struggling), of college age or racing on as a father or mother in need of providing for a growing family of their own. 

The sport of swimming needs those who officiate, it needs those who govern, it needs the likes of ConocoPhillips, British Gas, Speedo, Arena, Omega, Myrtha Pools, the long-term players who help to keep the sport and the show on the road. It also needs to hear, heed and act upon the voices of those who serve as guardians of the sport at the very coal face day after day, decade after decade: coaches. But what all of those entities and the sport of swimming need most is swimmers. 

Time to find a better balance between a world in which professional men and women rightfully expect a decent wage and demand it if they are to stick with a commitment to swimming and a world in which the majority of world-class swimmers continue to live from hand to mouth for the few short years in which they are held up as poster boys and girls for the money-making machine that is the Olympic model of sports governance.

SwimNews does not operate a forum, the reason all too obvious when you consider the defamation and profanity to be found in the comments that follow the blogging world and the costs, effort and waste of life involved in monitoring every view made public. SwimNews does hear from coaches, swimmers, parents and officials on a continual basis, however. They put their names to comments and provide valuable insight on a range of topics affecting their sport.

If you are a coach, athlete, parent or official with a view on athlete funding, feel free to write to craig@swimnews.com. In late October, we will publish the views of those who respond. As always, one condition is imposed for your view to be considered: you must identify yourself by real name, even if you wish your comment to be quoted without your identity being made public. There is no point in a debate where "little fish" tells "bigboss" to go forth and multiply. There is every point in a debate in which "an Olympic silver medallist" says he quit because he cannot afford to remain in the sport; there is every point to a "coach to medal winners at the past five Olympic Games" explaining why a gladiator ought to survive on bread and water til they find fame or fall by the wayside.

"Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk?" - Corinthians 9:7