Top 20 Most Significant Swim Stories Of 2016: #5 – Flip Side Of Murphy’s Law; USA Rules

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

Our series so far:

6: Dolphins Down Under But No Underdogs 7: The colour is 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, Team USA, Tradition, the new wave led by Ryan Murphy, the steady accent to Olympic heights and  Australia.  

No 5 – The Flip Side Of Murphy’s Law; Team USA Rules

Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Flip it on its back in honour of the backstroke king of Rio 2016 and you have anything that can go right, will go right. That’s how Team USA approaches the Olympic Games, not just this last quad but for many before that. This file focusses on Ryan Murphy but celebrates the system that backs him up – and the teammates that did that, too, in Rio 2016.

The Dazzling Time Of John Naber – Montreal 1976 [ragout from L’Equipe – Les Jeux Olympiques, Tome II]

Lenny Krayzelburg (USA) by Patrick B. Kraemer

The double backstroke triumph of the new head boy of the Class of 2016 on the way to Tokyo 2020 epitomised the slow burn, stroke for stroke threat that was there to see for those who wanted to see it in the days beyond the faewell of Aaron Peirsol and the tussle of Ryan Lochte and Tyler Clary on the back of a deep tradition stacked with a backbone of backstroke aces on Team USA. There with them, the spirit and strength of Warren Kealoha, George Kojac, Adolf Kiefer, Allen Stack, Yoshinobu Oyakawa, Jed Graef, John Naber, Richard Carey, Jeff Rouse, Brad Bridgewater, Lenny Krayzelburg and all those who backed up the fort with podium visits of their own.

In the SwimVortex preview series of the Rio Olympics, our headline over men’s backstroke was this: “Kings Of Consistency: Mitch & The Mantle Seekers To Test The AUS Vs USA Swingometer“.

And this is how we began to analyse one of the biggest battlelines in the story of swimming supremacy:

The backstroke events are marked by a top story line in which the pressure is on when it comes to the opposing forces of status quo and regime change. Double World champion Mitch Larkin, of Australia, seeks to topple a towering tradition, while Ryan Murphy, David Plummer and Jacob Pebley seek to keep the Stars and Stripes flying over the backstroke realm Americans have dominated in Olympic waters for the past five Olympic Games.

In the 100m, you have to go back to Mark Tewksbury at Barcelona 1992 to find a non-American winner, the Canadian pipping American world record holder Jeff Rouse. In the 200m, you have to go back to Martin Lopez-Zubero at Barcelona 1992 to find a non-American winner, the Spaniard, a product of the U.S. swim program.

Mitch Larkin, of Australia, by Patrick B. Kraemer

The Swimgometer: the backstroke events in Rio are on the frontline of the battle between the United States and Australia when it comes to which nation can claim the lion’s share of gold by the close of eight days of racing.

And so it proved.

Just look at the tilt and topple in the waves:

After the second day of action, the USA Vs AUS count looked like this:

USA Vs AUS – medals

Day 2 Form guide: USA – 5; AUS – 1 Rio Result: USA – 5; AUS – 1 Total after 2 days: Form guide: USA – 9; AUS – 2 Rio Result: USA – 9; AUS – 2

Ryan Murphy celebrates 100m gold in Rio – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Then came the decisive days, when the runes had the USA down for four medals, Australia three. It went: USA – 6; AUS – 0.

In the men’s 100m backstroke, world champion Mitch Larkin was not hugely off his best but he was decisively off it: no medal, while the USA nailed two, split by China’s Xu Jiayu, Ryan Murphy the champion, David Plummer taking bronze. The Australian wheels had started to come off the bus. By the end of Day 3, those who owened momentum were wearing Stars & Stripes – and the writing was on the end wall:

USA Vs AUS – medals

Day 3: Form guide: USA – 4; AUS – 3 Rio Result: USA – 6; AUS – 0 Total: Form guide: USA – 13; AUS – 5 Rio Result: USA – 15; AUS – 2

(L-R) Nathan Adrian, Michael Phelps, Ryan Murphy and Cody Miller – medley relay gold – by PBK

(L-R) Simone Manuel, Kathleen Baker, Dana Vollmer, Lilly King – medley relay gold – by PBK

We know what happened next. SwimVortex’s John Lohn summed up the mood when he wrote:  “For eight days at the Rio Aquatics Centre, Team USA frolicked in the water, playing the splashing bully to the rest of the world. More precisely, the Americans took the opposition and dunked them. There were no lifeguards to boot them out, either. No one to stop the roughhousing.

“This was the United States’ pool, and its athletes made the rules.”

They claimed 16 golds, including a joint win in the women’s 100m free – and others claimed 18 wins, the lion’s share but diluted among 13 nations, only four of which celebrated more than 1 gold, only one nation with three golds, a single swimmer accounting for the three golds of the other triple.

John started his piece (reproduced below in our ‘from the archive’ reninders): When are we going to learn? When are we going to put doubt away, and trust a system that has rarely – if ever – failed? When are we going to not go doomsday with our attitude?

The question from the rest of the world is clear: When are you going to learn? Where is your understanding when it comes to understanding how the USA system works and why that is so helpful to it come the biggest of moments, come the hour that it is all about? Some have understood. Look at Adam Peaty, look at Britain in general, look at Mireia Belmonte, Sarah Sjostrom, Gregorio Paltrinieri, Kyle Chalmers, Mack Horton, look at those who guide them and we know they know what it takes.

Is that work and the lessons therein rolled out to the shoal and the wider world of swimming and its attractiveness to parents who make choices and their children who makes choices in the places they are led to?

Visit the United States, take many a program and hone in on one that sums up many others, a program such as the Gators in Florida. There you will see the flow that turns the water golden somewhere downstream as tributary turns to river on the way to the ocean of global competition.

The Florida Gators and many other college programs have been critical to the U.S.A. maintaining its world No 1 status in the elite pool for generations [Image, courtesy of Gator Zone]

Peer down the end of the outdoor training pool and we find Britain’s Gemma Spofforth and other achievers in the race and achievers in the role of teaching kids, spreading the swimming word in a glorious atmosphere of learning through fun, neither float nor buoy nor other aid in sight. Water is what they work with; water is the element to be honoured, trusted and respected.

Reach for the other end of the spectrum. Peer round the deck outside and inside and coach Gregg Troy patrols his domain alongside the likes of Martyn Wilby, Anthony Nesty, Leah Stencil (nee Martingale). 

Soar up towards the clouds with your camera and watch the lights go on and the lines draw out across the United States to the network of coaches and programs they are linked with and to.

The regular test of college competition in the midst of searing training regime: fun, camaraderie, team spirit and more of the things that cushion the blunter instruments of daily preparation, discipline, decication and determination.

Tap into coaches networks and see the flow of information on a daily basis; consider a national federation, USA Swimming, that has much to answer when it comes to falling down on its leadership responsibility at global level but has the back of its athletes in one key area: on the whole, it does not interfere (and where it has done it surely realises how steep the drop can be) in performance preparation.

A face in the crowd: Michael Phelps with U.SA. teammates – by PBK

A Bill Sweetenham reading recommendation: “The Serengeti Rules” It focusses on Smallpox and how the disease was conquered. Replace Smallpox for swimming and you get this list from John Leonard, director of the world and American coaches associations:

Global Effectiveness is Possible. Nothing happens by accident. Plan, then execute. Coalitions are powerful if the individuals suppress their ego’s for common goals. Social Will is crucial and must be transformed into political will. Solutions rest on Good Science, but Implementation depends on Management. The Objectives must be Global, but the Action must be Local. Local culture determines Tactics. Nothing gets conquered everywhere at once. It must begin Somewhere. Important Challenges can’t wait till everyone is on board. Leadership counts. Individuals choices MATTER.

“Corruption and Doping are just as stubborn as smallpox,” says Leonard. How right he is. USA Swimming, like all domestic federations of the world, have called down badly on both issues in that they have allowed it all to happen on their watch and even given succour to a FINA leadership failing athletes and clean sport on a regular basis.

At local level, the USA, most specifically, the coaches and programs that nurture and home talent, gets it right on just about every point on Leonard’s list from Sweetenham’s recommended reading.

In the midst of that picture, take a look at what happens beyond all those days of preparation in programs far and wide across the United States. Trials close to the big one and then a short return to the bosom of family and home before regrouping in readiness for battle. For battle read “repeating everything we have learned when it comes to making sure we are at the best we can be on each and every one of the days of the Olympic Games.”

Cameron McEvoy by PBK

Read this small extract from a radio interview Down Under in the fallout of Australia’s showing at Rio 2016 – make what you will of it but pay particuylar attention to the American name cited by Bill Sweetenham.

On the issue of stage fright, Sweetenham adds: “Jacco [Verhaeren] came out and said it was nerves. McEvoy. Nerves? That’s a load of rubbish. He’s a seasoned, very seasoned athlete. He’s embarrassed now, he’s humiliated and Richard Scarce, his coach, has got to try and rebuild him. But it’s a missed opportunity. I’m sure that Magnussen was destroyed after London 2012 … the athletes are not being provided with accurate leadership and good systematic development at the Olympic podium.” Citing what the USA get right and the role of Jack Roach and others leaders in the United States campaign for Rio, Sweetenham speaks those words to Sydney’s 2GB radio lead Alan Jones, who nailed the tone of debate Down Under when – whether or not any of us agree on what caused it and who is to blame and what may now be done about it – he said: “The coach’s job is to take talent to the top of the mountain. Not to try to try to climb every mountain but certainly the Olympic mountain. Our problem is that there are now others on the summit looking back at others from the place where we expected to be. And the coach has to take responsibility for the fact that others have got to the mountain before us. Now Mr. Well-Paid Verhaeren you’re the head coach: give the rhetoric a miss. This bloke is on a holiday from reality. Bill Sweetenham’s not and he’s on the line …”

Jack Roach. Mentor. Pedagog and passer-on of things that work, winning culture and ways. He is a significant cog in the wheel that turns at the heart of the soul and central nervous system of a success story that has lasted more than 100 years. Indeed, it is hard to find as stark an example of continuous team strength and winning ways in any squad or discipline in the realm of global world-class sport that matches the bull run of United States Swimming.

Here’s what we’re talking about, an extract from the SwimVortex archive:

Jack Roach, centre, with 2015 USA world junior 4x200m free champions (l-r) Grant House, Grant Shoults, Maxime Rooney and Sean Grieshop (courtesy of Jack Roach, Facebook)

Jack Roach caught on camera leading by example with a spot of lifting his own weight during USA national camp ahead of world titles [Facebook]

In the ranks of the quiet contributors to surround-sound success in swimming, there’s a man called Jack Roach, who has led a USA juniors tour and training program for several years – and now has a new role doing what he’s so good at doing: talking to talent and mentors one-on-one, telling it like it is, honesty harnessed not as a challenge but a strength.

Back in 2011, the USA Junior World Cup Tour included a 2:00.03 world short-course record from Missy Franklin, 16, while the party included a senior-team mentor called Michael Phelps.

Roach has moved on, his newest role with USA Swimming is to serve as a consultant for athlete-and-coach relations for the National Team. It is, he says, “what I enjoy doing the most”. That much is obvious to any who meet and talk to Roach about the world of developing talent, getting folk to get the best out of themselves, all the way to the ultimate prizes in sport but rich in the rewards that spill to life beyond the pool.

“Communication has remained largely the same and that’s a huge part of my days,” he says in a 20 Questions Tuesday at USA Swimming.

“You know, as crazy as it sounds, when you get around these young people who are so passionate and inspired with the common goal of representing the United States, it gives you energy – that attitude and ambition are infectious.”

You’ll find similar approaches in the coaches Roach works alongside, national team and beyond. So positive is Roach – a man who leads by example – that his words, particularly in the context of an interview bent on the upbeat (no criticism intended but that is the nature of interviews conducted on behalf of official bodies), could be received as a sell in one direction. Don’t be fooled.

Take the following as a hint of the honesty that plays an important part in the process of developing young talent through to big-time podiums. Asked what helping young folk to develop means to him, Roach says:

“I believe that everyone is genuinely a good person. …

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