Did the Australian swimming team meet and live up to their expectations and those of the Australian public at the Rio Olympics?
To be brutally honest you would have to say no.
Admittedly the expectations placed on them were extremely high and possibly unrealistic. This brings us to the question was the preparation for Rio what it should have been?
The timing of the selection trials – five months before the Rio Olympics – was opposed to Australia’s arch nemesis the USA who held their trials five weeks before Rio is in definite need of a review.
You only have to look at the disparity in the medals won between the two countries to see that Australia underachieved with the USA winning 16 gold and 33 in total as opposed to Australia who won just three gold and ten medals in total.
Sure the U S A had two outstanding Champions in Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, but Australia had eight swimmers who had the world’s best times in their events in the lead up to Rio. Let’s not sugar coat it. For whatever reason, some high-profile swimmers just didn’t perform up to scratch.
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have had the trials much closer to Rio so that the swimmers would have been on an upward spiral in their training? Or is it all about when they should taper off in their training leading up to a major competition?
The culture and camaraderie within the Australian team appeared to be much improved from the Olympics in London 2012. The mentoring of the younger swimmers by past champions such as Michael Klim was a great innovation, but at the end of the day the harsh reality is that the barometer of true success at an Olympic Games is measured by how many medals a country wins – in particular gold.
Make no mistake about it each and every athlete who represented Australia at Rio did so with pride and passion. Just by making the Australian Olympic team they achieved something that 99.9 per cent of us mere mortals will never achieve.
Moving forward it can only be hoped that the Australian Olympic Committee will have a comprehensive review across all sports to determine what, if any, modifications need to be made to future teams representing Australia. This is at not only the Olympics, but also the Commonwealth Games, to ensure that athletes are given every conceivable opportunity to be in peak physical and mental condition .
Maybe more emphasis needs to be placed on having sports psychologists and nutritionists more readily available and not over committing our leading athletes too much so that they can better handle the pressure and weight of expectation and perform at their optimum level.
Professor Rosseforp
Guest
The timing of the trials is a furphy. It masks the real advantage that the Americans have, and that is the ability to coach athletes to peak performance at the right time, and to be able to repeat that peak performance at each stage of qualifying. Some of our swimmers went in as world record holders, some of them picked up world records in heats. I think if they had the American coaching team, they would have known how to make those performances count in the finals. Is it psychology, tapering, drugs, team esprit de corps? I don't know, but the coaches do it across all sports in the USA, and it must relate to the extreme competition amongst coaches in the college and university sports. Whatever people think about the USA, their culture provides high quality products consistently (in this case, athletes), and if you want the best, the USA is the place to get it.
aussikiwi
Guest
Um Sheek in fairness I don't think that is what sports psychologists do. They have been an important part of many sporting successes. Having said that, they clearly arent having much success with the swimming team. Their job is to help people reach their best performance while under huge pressure.
sheek
Roar Guru
I think part of your last paragraph is perhaps more telling than you realise. I think psychologists might be part of the problem, not the solution. It would send me batty having these people intruding on my daily routine drumming up pseudo team building exercises. When you have to pretend, or force people to believe they are all luvvy-duvvy, it just doesn't work out eventually. But I agree perhaps holding the trials closer to the Olympics, & introducing more actual opposed racing, are two things that require serious consideration.
smell the fear
Guest
winners have parties, losers have reviews (again)