Why Swimmers Will Tread Water Until They Gain Real Access To Decision Making

After considering the woeful state of the world cup and ahead of some thoughts on what a professional swimming world might one day come to look like, the following article highlights one of the primary barriers to significant progress for swimmers and swimming beyond the biggest championship moments.

Editorial

The house of FINA has been built to protect the status quo of the leadership. At the heart of that structure is a system of commissions appointed to grant expert advice (many members are far from being practitioners or experts in the fields of work commissions are charged with) to the leadership.

That system has long used to block out those who beg to differ, those who believe there are better ways to do business, those who believe athletes and coaches and others get far too little say in the way the sport is run and the models through which the sport is sold to the world.

If much over-needed improvement in swimming is to come about and the sport is to find a professional pathway that works not in the primary interest of blazers but of athletes and their ability to earn a living (the world cup does that for fewer than a handful of people) and pay their way through a sporting life in the fast lane (none do that, swimming a sport that takes place at the elite level through high levels of subsidisation), then the swimmer (past and/or current) is going to have to step up, be happy to be counted and become engaged in the process of improvement. Some already have/are, through initial discussions, athlete feelings summed up nicely by Geoff Cheah last year.

There is plenty of evidence to confirm that athletes have just what it takes to step up to challenge, of course: they have done it and do do it in the water on race day and in training; they have done it and do do it when speaking out as controversy comes to call, doping the theme of this Olympic year like no other before it, largely in part to those athletes and coaches and others who refused to be silenced by those who feel themselves the only ones with a right to have a say (and yet say nothing, or worse still, defend the indefensible).

More than at any time since the Perth 1998 World Championships and a China doping crisis so deep and steep that athletes, coaches and even anti-doping officials linked to the machine felt free to speak out. Some of those anti-doping chiefs resigned in protest at the malaise in FINA over the Russian doping crisis.

There was simply no alternative but to do so, they felt. Among athletes that same feeling manifested itself in protest during the Rio Olympics: call it saturation point, a tipping point, perhaps, but whatever we call it, the moment arrived after having been awaited like rain in a drought. Time for change of the kind that brings progress not the same of the same with the same people who have made so many poor decisions and propped up a woeful culture of riches for them, stagnation for their sport, for the past 30  years since  FINA appointed its first office manager (the same man still in charge as director at 75 years of age to this day).

The great claim to success is the money that has flowed through swimming. No denying that’s been the case but swimming is light years behind professional sports on the conveyor belt despite its status as a big-draw Olympic sport.

A quick recap on the most recent events that led to all of this and that takes us past an ASCA World Clinic at which coaches voted unanimously for and granted a standing ovation to the creation of the World Swimming Association as a vehicle that would seek alternative ways to what they clearly think of as a failing FINA.

Star Wars by Patrick B. Kraemer

It takes us past the World Aquatics Development Conference and the topic of Ethics in sport and on to the likes of coach Jon Rudd speaking up for clean sport and athletes. It takes us to Rio, where Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps, Mack Horton and Lilly King led the calling of a spade a spade, with many others following and whole national-team campaigns ending in the way head coach Bill Furniss ended Britain’s: with a note on how damaging doping is to sport and the clean athlete and confirmation that the wounds run deep and the bitterness felt against those who cheat and those who go not even as far as the powers available to them when it comes to taking a stand for clean athletes has the chill of an arctic wind.

This is what you get when swimming custodians leave swimmers to defend clean sport:

And yet, some of those same people among coaches can be found propping up the very people they have criticised. Bob Bowman and David Marsh will speak at 3rd FINA Swimming Coaches Golden Clinic, as will Bill Furniss, Fred Vergnoux, Ben Titley and Magnus Kjellberg.

That is not the pathway to the kind of improvement in governance structures that will take swimming to a higher level. That will simply reinforce the edifice that needs to be demolished. That will simply reinforce a system in which coach ‘expertise’ is not run by the body representing world coaches but by politicians and those who owe them; that will simply reinforce a system of ‘development’ clinics that match closely the work that coaches did for FINA 30 years ago: all happy on the day; beyond that, almost entirely ineffective on three levels:

growing swimming in developing countries (much of that is lip service, with no real evidence of significant improvement) bringing developing nations closer to the standards of the elite swim nations (not happening, John Naber, Jim Montgomery, Tracey Wickham, even Shane Gould and Roland Matthes and others of that era yet light years ahead of the vast bulk of current national records in their best events in the majority of FINA member nations) bringing about equality in programs around the world: among FINA’s biggest ‘friends and backers’ are Arab states that keep women out of the pool let alone the possibilities of elite, performance training and world-class sport. That failure to adhere to the FINA Constitution, its rules and FINA’s stated aims in life all overlooked in favour of golden thrones in the VIP stands and a fat cheque, part of which goes towards paying leading coaches to show up and give credence to FINA ‘activity’ and keep the same show on the road.

Furniss is among head coaches whose nations will have a fairly token team in Windsor, FINA’s second-biggest competitive showcase not considered significant enough to take a full national team to in peak form. Snap just about every other leading swim nation, the USA included.

So, if coaches are making strategic mistakes with such abandon, what can we expect of athletes?

the most damning indictment of FINA’s anti-doping commitment and success rate – but also the controlling structures built into the heart of the international federation and designed to ensure the status quo, good or bad, stands – when he said:

“We all want clean sports. That’s all we want. We want everybody to be on the same playing field. I can honestly say in my career I don’t know if I’ve ever competed in a clean sport. It’s upsetting. But there’s not really a lot that I can control, but me. That’s the main priority for me. We’ve had this problem for how many Olympics and its sad that we can’t control it; that someone who is in charge cannot control this. I can’t say I’ve ever been in a clean competition.”

So, “sad that we can’t control it; that someone who is in charge cannot control this”.

Those events in Rio cut to the chase on whether athletes have access to the decision-making process at the helm of swimming governance. Yes, the IOC, FINA and all such bodies have athletes’ commissions and representatives. No, those athletes in roles one would think could make a difference are simply unwilling or unable to raise the issues in a way that would and should make a big difference.

And they’re off – by Patrick B. Kraemer

…

continue reading in source www.swimvortex.com