Top 20 Most Significant Swimming Stories Of 2016: #6 – Down Under But No Underdog

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016.

Our series so far:

7: The colour if Gold: Olympic gold 8: Bob Bowman’s Golden Rules 9: The slow burn of Sarah Sjostrom and coaches 10: Mireia, Fred & The Alchemy Of If To When 11: Gregorio The Great 30-Lapper 12: Putting the Great Back Into Britain 13: Masters, Servants & Subsidies – a model of governance that has had its day 14: The ruinous nature of runes in an Olympic year 15: Custodians in Crisis: FINA – Same As It Ever Was 16: The Australia/ China interface highlights questions of faith & fair dinkum 17:  Schools Out; Schooling’s In: aspiration, inspiration and the impact of Michael Phelps 18. The Swimming Selfie 19. The Canadian Comeback  20. On Hosszu Heights

Today, Australia.  Our main image sums up what was a roller-coaster year that shaped the Rio 2016 Olympic outcome in favour of the United States. Here was the moment when Cat Campbell took down Britta Steffen’s world 100m freestyle record. The question is: why? 

For Australia, there was much to lament, unanswered questions in the mix, and much to celebrate, including the fact that Australia is a swim nation that can miss the target in 8 out of 9 big chances, most of those golden shots that resulted in no medal whatsoever, and still emerge second place on the overall medals table. That speaks to the strengths in the Australian program and the weakness in programs in many other places in the world. Even so, those in charge of Australian swimming – amid the stuff they get right – must surely look at what went wrong as they glance back on 2016 and know that the events of July and August grant them all their biggest reason to call in domestic critics and others long in the tooth and bang heads with a view to finding a better way come Tokyo 2020. 

No 6 – Down Under But Not The Underdog

There was a telling moment back on July 2 when, five weeks out from the Olympic showdown, Cate Campbell dropped a 52.06 bomb over 100m freestyle. World record, shinier than shiny. If there was one swimmer, one race a swimming observer would have put money on for conversion to gold this was it.

And yet, as the first words of our women’s sprint freestyle preview for Rio put it: “All over? Well, it’s never over until fingertips meet pad, clock stops and celebration and commiseration begin.”

That telling moment

With a touch of ‘history tells us so’, a touch of hindsight: on July 2, when Campbell, fresh from being heralded and celebrated on the deck around domestic waters by none other than the legendary Dawn Fraser, was asked about Olympic gold, she said: “No, no I don’t think I’ll take that tact. I swim best when I think of myself as the underdog and that’s how I’ll continue to see myself.”

Underdog? Why? Clearly she was not. Somewhere down the line a line between keeping feet on ground and recognising the reality of worth and standing had been crossed is a less than helpful way.

World record five weeks out from the Olympic Games in and from a nation that tells its programs: we do April trials and don’t follow the U.S. model of sudden-death stuff four weeks out from the big one. That doesn’t work for us’. Ok, so, why do it then? What was July 2 about? What was the plan for a supreme athlete who had swum world-class times in February, April and May and July (four efforts that would have won the Olympic crown by a today margin).

After that reference to ‘underdog’, Campbell then reflected on one of her favourite movies “Cool Runnings” when she said: “There is a really great quote in there form the coach and it says: ‘a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you will never be enough with it’ and I think that’s something I really need to take to heart.

“I have achieved incredible things and an Olympic gold medal would be the absolute pinnacle for me but I have to make sure that I’m okay if that doesn’t happen. And I’m okay if that doesn’t happen.”

“Tonight was about swimming the right race, that was challenging me, and tonight I put together as near a perfect race as I can, and I think that if I can continue to do that then I’ll be happy with whatever happens in Rio. I race really well when I’m happy and settled. I’ve been working with a sports psych about how to control those nerves because they do get quite out of control.”

Ask The Sports Psych To Step Aside

Nothing personal but that sports psychologist has to go. Australians were urged to seek psycho help in the wake of Rio 2016. Hopefully, the advice will shift significantly. The psycho work before the Games clearly did not work for far too many if it was aimed at helping to deliver what 2016 was all about: a clear golden shot at the Olympic Games.

Had the sports psychologist noticed that Campbell felt like an underdog? Had the sports psychologist suggested that was a good thing? The reason to ask is very clear: do we suppose Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Adam Peaty, Ryan Murphy, Sarah Sjostrom and Co approached the blocks in Rio believing themselves to be an underdog? Like hell they did.

As things turned out, Campbell emerged from Rio the underdog she believed she was. She did not continue to put together “as near a perfect race” as she could. Indeed, she was well over a second down on her best 100m and the way she approached her blocks – a type and level of nervousness that did indeed suggest she was the underdog, not the swimmer with a helpful margin of comfort – and the way she tackled the race suggested trouble ahead.

Swimming Australia flagged it all up in lights: Before Fraser left the 100m free world record at 58.9 in 1964, Fanny Durack (1:16.2, 1915) held the 100m world standard, while since the legend, Lorraine Crapp (1:02.4, 1956) another legend, namely Shane Gould (58.5, 1972), as well as Libby Lenton (later Trickett, 53.42, 2006 – and a discounted 52.99, 2007) and Jodie Henry (53.52, 2004), have broken the mark. Campbell is the seventh Australian woman to wear the blue-ribband speed crown – those six women accounting for 23 world records, Fraser the breaker of a record 12 between 1956 and 1964.

Cate Campbell celebrates a 52.06 world 100m freestyle record in Brisbane – courtesy of Swimming Australia

All six of those swimmers claimed Olympic gold. Campbell was to have been the seventh wave. It might have been better not to flag her up as such just five weeks out in a domestic celebration that surely heaped more pressure on Campbell than was good for her. That is a management issue. That has nothing to do with the towering skills and talent of the athlete. Campbell ends 2016 as the swiftest 100m sprinter we have ever known – and how.

Here is another management issue: when did you ever hear an American swimmer in need of defending its federation and its team culture in quite this way – Cate Campbell at Auburn camp in the US on the cusp of the Olympic Games:

“You cannot compare where we are now to where we were in 2012. I think that it is unfair and disrespectful to the athletes on this team to constantly be bringing up something that happened in 2012, and most of them were not a part of it. I had a great 2012, and I can look back on that with pride. It’s not just the athlete that’s changed, it’s the organization. We’ve opened channels of communication and it has been a great and liberating process to be a part of. And I think we can very well and truly put this matter to rest.”

There are those in Australia who did not and do not want to hear the words contained in a couple of out from the archive choices below. Yet hear it, embrace it, set aside pride and have the discussion/debate/argument, they must. That should happen in private with the right people in the room. If it does not, then we can expect it all to unfold in public.

Among the first responses to Rio, Swimming Australia is scrapping semi-finals and cutting short its trials for major events in the wake of a nightmare outcome for its biggest golden shots at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Since 1988, when Don Talbot took the helm of the program Down Under, Australia has followed the American model of trials that mirror the schedule for the big event of the season, such as Olympic Games or World Championships. Next year, the Australian trials will be reduced to five days, Nicole Jeffery reported in The Australian.

Reasons to excuses can be found in many places but the result is in and some of it was immensely disappointing.

Five weeks beyond Campbell’s 52.06: Rio 2016 – no Olympic medal in a race where 52.7 took joint gold and 52.99 the bronze to a swimmer both Cate and –Bronte Campbell, world champion, had beaten before when that swimmer was herself a significant touch sharper. Unthinkable. The 50m went the same way: no medals.

Cate and Bronte Campbell digest the 100m result – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Emily Seebohm – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Bronte, no solo medal for the double world champion. Then there was Mitch Larkin, a double World champion who came the closest of all of the 2015 roaring success stories to their promised form, his silver in the 200m backstroke the one target hit out of 9 very, very solid shots at the podium, and good shots at gold at that.

No solo medals for Emily Seebohm, another double World champion. And Cameron McEvoy, the fastest man ever in a textile suit over 100m freestyle but washed away in the boil and froth of an Olympic final that gave us one of the highlights of the upside of Australia’s Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Kyle Chalmers waited for his teammate, McEvoy showed enormous grace and courage after a race that simply did not go the way he had planned, the way he had worked for.

In that moment, we caught a glimpse of the truth of the Australian swim team: cultural and team dynamics had little or nothing to do with the way things panned out. Seeking explanations only in the realm of the world-class athlete may lead only to dead ends.

Australia’s answers will be found in the planning trials to Games; in some of the choices made by coaches and swimmers and backed by a federation too keen to celebrate its swimmers gains before the moment of reality.

Note the USA’s last quad. (NB: yes, the NBC time schedule was more helpful than not. What knocked many clearly did not affect Americans in quite the same way and much of that is down to planning – I hear all the arguments against that thought on helpfulness but don’t accept them, if only on the basis that I would seriously doubt that NBC’s plans came as quite the same surprise and drop to USA programs as they did to swimmers from elsewhere in the world – and none of that should have come to pass).

Michael Phelps of the United States of America (USA) in the only pool that ever counted for him – by Patrick B. Kraemer

So often between London and Rio there appeared to be signs the American run of dominance in the pool was going to be sorely tested at Rio 2016. Many of those signs were illusions. The last quad was fraught with a bag of less that power-packed results, at Pan Pacs and even world titles. Fans were fooled because they had their eye on the result sheet and not on the reasons why things might have panned out as they did. Too few know much about long-term plans, preparations and singular focus on the moment that matters beyond all others: the Olympic Games.

If you add in a Phelps here, a Murphian progress there, a shocker of a count beyond that when it came to missed Australian targets and a history that tells is that where there is a tight bronze to grab  the USA is more likely to gran it than the rest, then it was not hard to see through all illusions.

It was impossible, of course, to see through the illusion of great Australian prospects at Rio 2016 because the form guide stacked up so favourably for the Dolphins. What could not be seen was the “then you go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like” Olympics. Look at the image of Phelps, take in the caption ‘ “the only pool that ever counted for him”. All lanes led to the Olympic Games – and he said it, and said it, and said it again. No secret. It mattered, He wanted it. It was not a problem that he wanted it and stated publicly that he wanted it. The truth was out there. And he delivered.

Australia: terrific results at World, Commonwealth and Pan Pac levels we have seen before. Aplenty. Questions aplenty, too.  It will only become clear whether Australia has asked the right questions to find the right answers come Tokyo2020. Nothing in between, not even rousing results at world titles, will tell us if the problems of 2016 have been understood to a degree that leads to solutions that limit the risk of a repeat.

As noted in one of our archive pieces below: it is not simply the fault of the athlete. In Cate Campbell, Australia has a supermen, towering, world-class athlete who has proved herself time and again. So where did it go wrong on the way to and in Rio? The answer will not be found by glaring endlessly at the athlete nor the coach. The issues run deeper and wider.

The Good News

Meanwhile, Australia has every reason to celebrate Rio and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Here’s the overall result, one, as we noted up top, speaks to Australia’s swimming tradition and the fine work with outstanding talent that leaves the Dolphins as world No 2 in a league headed by a superpower that has no peers when it comes to overall team strength. A different league, in fact – the Rio medals:

1  United States 16 8 9 33 2  Australia 3 4 3 10

Bronte Campbell, Cate Campbell, Brittany Elmslie and Emma McKeon – WR for Australia – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Where the medals came from

GOLD

100 m freestyle – Kyle Chalmers – 47.58 WJR 400 m freestyle – Mack Horton – 3:41.55 (more on him and that later in our list) 4x100m freestyle – 3:30.65 WR – Emma McKeon (53.41); Brittany Elmslie (53.12); Bronte Campbell (52.15); Cate Campbell (51.97); R – Madison Wilson

Mack Horton of Australia – by Patrick B. Kraemer

SILVER

200m backstroke – Mitch Larkin – 1:53.96 200m butterfly: Madeline Groves – 2.04.88 4x200m freestyle – 7:44.87 – Leah Neale (1:57.95); Emma McKeon (1:54.64); Bronte Barratt (1:55.81); Tamsin Cook (1:56.47); R – Jessica Ashwood 4x100m medley – 3:55.00 – Emily Seebohm (58.83); Taylor McKeown (1:07.05); Emma McKeon (56.95); Cate Campbell (52.17); R – Madison Wilson; Madeline Groves; Brittany Elmslie

Kyle Chalmers by Patrick B. Kraemer

BRONZE

200m freestyle – Emma McKeon – 1:54.92 4x100m freestyle: James Roberts (48.88); Kyle Chalmers (47.38); James Magnussen (48.11); Cameron McEvoy (47.00); R: Matthew Abood 4x100m medley: Mitch Larkin (53.19); Jake Packard (58.84); David Morgan (51.18); Kyle Chalmers (46.72); R: Cameron McEvoy

And what might have been had the golden shots hit their targets by taking gold or silver in the way the form guide suggested it was possible:

1  United States 13 7 9 29 2  Australia 7 9 3 19

Still a strong win for the USA but no longer a dominant one – and such guessing games take no account of the flow of an Olympic week and the stream of results that affect team mood and response as the days unfold.

Not long before Christmas, this was a new line from Australia: Only three of the 10 coaches with Australia on the pool deck at London 2012 remain in the ­national high-performance program, highlighting what reporter Nicole Jeffery describes in The Australian today as “an alarming brain drain from the sport over the past four years”.

Read more and what the coaches had to say at The Australian.

Meanwhile, Australia has many more reasons to celebrate Rio 2016 and the year as a whole  than most other nations. The drop comes down to what might have been. What ought not to be is clear: Australia, the swimming underdog? Like hell it is. It is very much a swimming power. Something went badly wrong on the way to Rio. Australia’s Tokyo 2020 and beyond will depend on rooting out and facing whatever that might have been.

Our from the archive below reflect the fallout from Rio in three articles that highlight the divide in debate and response Down Under.

From the Archive Australia Olympic Swim Team Urged To Book ‘Psycho Debrief’ To Adjust To Life After Rio – September 2016

Mitch Larkin, of Australia, by Patrick B. Kraemer

Australian Olympic swimming team members are being urged to book a post-Games debrief with a psychologist to help them “adjusting back into normal life” after Rio 2016.

Australia emerged with three gold medals in 13 podium visits in all for second place on the medals table behind runaway winner the United States.

The Dolphins’ tally improved on the 10 medals topped by one gold at a London 2012 Games that led to inquiry, recrimination and punishment.

However, with almost all golden prospects for Australia in Rio falling well shy of potential, four of them missing a solo medal of any colour, the swim team returned home to a mixed reception, from public and media.

The moment for psychological help might have been “before they fell over”, suggested one source, but it is now that Team members are now encouraged to seek psychological help to cope with the “highs and low” of returning to life after the party.

The letter states:

“Our team dynamic changes as we all head in different directions, we find ourselves pulled back into the world of family, friends and work, we hear stories of the adventures we missed whilst away and we share stories of our time together.

“The journey to the Olympics often involves a long build up and culminates in an emotionally charged experience for all involved. This is part of the journey . . . the Olympic Journey. And while everyone’s experience will differ, we encourage you to take care after the Olympic Games.”

All are encouraged to reach out to head coach Jacco Verhaeren, Georgia Ridler, performance psychologist and Lana McCcloughan, the personal excellence coordinator at Swimming Australia.

The letter concludes: “Look after yourself, look out for each other and use the next 2 months to learn from this amazing experience.”

Amazing may not be the best description that the likes of Cate Campbell, Bronte Campbell, Emily Seebohm and Cameron McEvoy will want to attach to Rio 2016 in terms of the performances that left them painfully shy of where the form guide suggested they would be a year ago at world titles and a few months ago at Olympic trials.

A source said that the letter with the Take Care message had caused offence among some of those receiving it, the Rio team having included folk of towering experience and success, people who have been round the Olympic rings more times than they may care to recall.

2. Aussie Swim Boss John Bertrand: We Will Be “honest with each other” In Rio Review

Jessica Ashwood – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Swimming Australia President John Bertrand has promised a review of the national swim team’s performance at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games  in which all will be “honest with each other in our assessment and in examining every single aspect of our preparation to ensure we bounce back better next time”.

Swimming Australia was disappointed, says CEO Mark Anderson, with reports suggesting that swimmer behaviour “within the broader Australian team were not what they should be”. He had written immediately to the Australian Olympic Committee to seek an explanation as to why no AOC official had raised any issues swimming-team officials at any stage before the claims appeared in media.

Australian team chef de mission Kitty Chiller was reported to be planning “to confront Australian swimming about their insular team culture at the Rio Olympics that was at loggerheads to her ‘one team’ mantra”, as the Australian Telegraph put it.

Chiller was reluctant to discuss the behaviour of swimmers and refused to go into specifics about her complaints. Those will now be thrashed out with Swimming Australia.

It has been reported that posters of Australian Olympic heroes Cathy Freeman and Herb Elliott were replaced by swimmers on their floor of the athletes’ village while they also replaced the “one team” catch cry for “our team”, the Dolphins’ chant of the past two year. Chiller said in Rio:

“I acknowledge some sports have their own identity and it’s difficult to not lose that but incorporate their identity into a broader identity at Games time. But I won’t make any further comment until I’ve had the opportunity to speak with swimming about that.”

Mack Horton of Australia – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Kyle Chalmers of Australia – by Patrick B. Kraemer

The top two Swimming Australia officials, meanwhile, were speaking as the Olympic team arrived home from Brazil to find praise for those who stepped up and support for those who fell down. There were golds for the women’s 4x100m freestyle quartet, in world-record time, Mack Horton in the 400m freestyle and Kyle Chalmers in the 100m freestyle.

In contrast, very strong …

continue reading in source www.swimvortex.com