Swimming Australia has hired a consultancy firm to review claims of a culture problem in the sport stemming from the Australian team’s London Olympics campaign.
Newly-appointed Swimming Australia president Barclay Nettlefold said on Tuesday consultancy firm Bluestone Edge would assess the culture and leadership of the sport at the elite level.
Leading swimmers including Libby Trickett and former champion Susie O’Neill were critical of the attitude and harmony of the Australian team during a campaign which produced only one gold medal in London.
Nettlefold said the review would be confidential, independent and look for solutions while examining swimmers, coaches and management.
Bluestone Edge director Dr Pippa Grange will lead the culture review – to be conducted in parallel with the broader review being undertaken by the independent swimming review panel chaired by Warwick Smith.
“Dr Grange and her team have been engaged in similar work with elite sporting teams and corporate organisations, with demonstrated success,” said Nettlefold.
“Bluestone Edge is committed to helping sports people and organisations flourish, using working models based on good ethical thinking, optimal organisational performance and active leadership.”
Dr Grange said she was delighted to be able to contribute to Swimming Australia’s program of review and renewal.
“The focus of our work will be on making recommendations that can help build a sound, sustainable culture that focuses on athlete and organisational wellbeing,” Dr Grange said.
Australian Swimmers’ Association general manager Daniel Kowalski welcomed the move.
“Our swimmers should feel confident about the direction the sport is heading,” said Kowalski.
Brendon
Guest
The USA hold their trials close to the Olympic Games while their swimmers are in heavy training and as a result their times don't look too flash compared to what they do it at the games. Nathan Adrian is the perfect example of this. Look at the pressure and scrutiny our swimmers received after having their trials 4-5 months before the games. Our swimmers taper off and peak for the trials and then have to go back into heavy training and peak all over again and theres little guarantee a swimmer putting in great times in March is going to be able to reproduce that in July/August. James Roberts is a perfect example. Another interesting stat is that both Libby Trickett and Liesel Jones have 4 individual gold medals (from Olympic distance events) from World Champs, quite a few setting world records in the process, but only have 1 individual gold each from the Olympics. Yes, World Champs are held every 2 years compared to 4 years for Olympics but in each case their World Championship golds were from 2005 and 2007 and yet between the 2004 and 2008 Olympics they only managed 1 gold each. Stephanie Rice has 0 world championship gold medals but pulled out magnificent performances in the 200m and 400m IM's in Beijing and along with Ian Thorpe (2004) are the only swimmers to have won more than 1 individual gold in the same games since Shane Gould.
Jack
Guest
Agree Brendon. Add to that the unrealistic expectations given by our pathetic press and there in lies the problem. Every Olympics Australia is going to dominate the pool and we never do, and never will in this modern era. By all means investigate the culture but also look at the basics. Correct timing of trials and technique are the most important, particularly technique. The Americans are technically perfect and win many Golds by that alone. And that is why swimmers from many countries go to the US to receive the best tuition. Look at the American Olympic trials each Games year and you will see they are peaking at precisely the right time. We can learn a lot from them.
Brendon
Guest
Sounds like a witch hunt that wont address the failures of the Australia swim team at the Olympics games. The whole fascination on "team culture", leadership and morale is a minor issue to Australian swimmers constantly choking and not even getting close to times from PB's, semis, world champs in Olympic finals. Give you an example. In Sydney 2000 we got 5 golds (only one of which didnt involve Thorpe or Hackett and that was Susie in the 200m free). In the 2001 World Champs we got 11 gold in Olympic events. in 2005 we got 9 gold in Olympic events, 2 more than Athens. Michael Klim, Geoff Huegill, Matt Walsh, Jessica Schipper, James Magnussen, Gian Rooney, Brenton Rickard, What do those names have in common? They've all won individual World Championship golds but not 1 individual Olympic gold.
Johnno
Guest
Rugby needs 1 too.