To win Olympic swimming medals in Rio...
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...we need to spend more money on it, not less. Indeed, we need a national centre like the cycling centre in Manchester. We need to train our swimmers exclusively in 50m Olympic-sized pools.
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We dont need to follow the old British thing of if in doubt, throw money at it. It doesnt work, and never will.
Look to sports that succeed, and it is those that use intelligence, innovation and though that succeed.
As the paper picked up today, it was only when hockey in this country virtually went bust that results improved, because it made them actually use new techniques and innovation
Swimming has a huge amount spent on it, arguably far too much relative to the success its ever delivered. If we just think money is the answer we'll head back to the dark ages of British sport
There are many 50m pools more than there are velodromes, bobsleigh tracks or canoe slalom courses.
What we need to do is put a clear strategy in place whereby the swimmers potential is bought out them. We have the talent, we just have to nurture it so that come 2016 we have swimmers at their best.
One of the things that went wrong this year was holding the trials back in March. They should be held closer to the date, like the Americans do, that way we know that the swimmers will be on form and close to their peak of performance.
Another thing to do is put more emphasis on swimming fast in morning sessions, something which we're not very good at doing. Just doing the bare minimum to qualify for a final/semi final isn't the best thing to do. The swimmers should be putting in at least 90% into morning swims, and then upping that to 100% in the evening swims.
There needs to be more input at a grassroots level too. As a swimming teacher, I'm seeing more and more kids not wanting to learn to swim, but preferring to play sports such as football as it's seen as more glamorous by the kids. It's a shame that they're not encouraged by their parents as I'd like to see, especially when I see swimmers with fantastic potential having that potential wasted as their parents capitulate to their kids wanting to play another sport.
I think there needs to be better training for club coaches as well. At one of the pools I teach at, none of the coaches are properly qualified, one is a level 2 swimming teacher but not an ASA certified coach. there's some swimmers there who do have the potential to be good, but they're being held back. What the ASA and British swimming need to be doing at the club level is making sure that the coaches know what they're doing and are trained to the highest standards, otherwise what talent we have will slip away!
The money they have is still a good old chunk they just need to invest it more carefully.
In some ways, cutting funding can be an effective motivator for people as well, imho.
trouble is thats the same old story, we've seen it for years how our swimmers do well outside of the olympics and then get it wrong when it matters most.
I would also add, so we went with a "weakened team", how about all the other nations and how strong their teams were ?
Would be fascinating to see how Dave Brailsford and his abilities in recruiting the best folk and organising things, and his famous supposed ability to look for every little thing that can add even a tiny percentage improvement, would do as overall head of the swimmers.
Actually I would say our team wasn't that weak - Jameson, Miley, Halsall, Simmonds, Lowe were all there.
Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/swimming/20755022
The fact that Jessica-Jane Applegate and Josef Craig were both up for Young SPOTY as well as Ellie being in the 12 up for the main award on Sunday last underscores the contrast within Our Greatest Team.
I think they could probably do with Dr Steve Peters or someone of his ilk - they did seem to mentally struggle a bit in London. Whereas most others got inspired by the home crowds the swimmers seemed to be crushed by it.
in fairness, even the Paralympic swimming team did very slightly under perform, missing their target by one medal.
I never said it was a weak team... I said it was weakened. Yes some of the big guns were there but quite a few weren't!
Thankfully the cyclists and rowers didn't assume that and seemed to almost leave no stone unturned in relentless pursuit of being all they could be and peaking at the right time.
And a lot of the detail that they cover is just relentlessly looking for that extra fraction of a percent and often doesn't cost that much.
but the point is the target set for the swimmers was pretty small at the olympics, no was expecting them to challenge china and the USA, so i feel that point is moot. They were set a target of 5-7 meddles and managed only 3, and really Jamison is the only swimmer who can walk away with his head held high in the context of London 2012 (Addlington, of course, has delivered in her career overall but would sill be somewhat disappointed).
The target set was perfectly attainable.
The ladies were particularly disappointing.
Ellie Simmonds seems to be the exception where the lanky swimmers have the advantage.
Maybe they should search for new talent like the rowers did when they found Helen Glover just a few years ago and gave her a trial as she had the right body to provide the lever advantage. In case anyone doesn't know, she was the first Brit gold medal winner of 2012, along with Heather Stanning, and if I remember right, they are the first female gold medal rowers GB have ever had.
Helen also had the best legs on show at this year's SPOTY. Yes I am biased, I'm male!
A very happy Christmas to the Olympic forum.
I am a little uncomfortable with medal targets in swimmimg. We supposedly did well in Beijing but only because of Adlington. Yes our medal target would have been achieved if Adlington or Miley had responded. But in swimming you just have one fantastic swimmer who multi medals and the opportunities just get taken away. In 2012 we had the Chinese and US swimmers producing a number of spectacular individuals at our expense. We just need one swimmer like this and we could had got all the medal targets - there's an element of lottery about it. An expensive lottery.
Thats the same as many sports with low medal targets, if specific individuals/team dont win, you fail. Swimming is a shambles in this country and deserves no special treatment
Err, Adlington did win bronze medals in both her events, so did as much as she could for the medal target ( though she clearly hoped for a different colour particularly in the 800 M ) and Miley was probably realistically only going for one medal in the 400 IM with hopes, but a much more outside chance, of a 200 IM medal. So really between these two we only missed out on one medal for which there was realistic expectations. So that would still have left us on 4, and short of the 5 to 7 target.
I think it is generally fair to set a medals target and this could have been achieved. Yes, if others perform extraordinarly well that is outside their control. But what is within their control is achieving their very best ( indeed it was not unrealistic to hope that some like Micheal Jamieson would reach new levels at the Olympics instead of him standing out as beating the trend ). Far too many of our swimmers performed below their best and indeed often slower than they had achieved in the trials. In all circumstrances, I think it proved a realistic medals target and unfortunately British swimming as a whole failed to deliver.
Britain held its Olympic trials in March this year, 13 weeks before start of the Games, and a number of swimmers experienced a decline in performance levels during the intervening period. Michael Phelps has commented that we need to move our trials to no more than 6 weeks before the Games.
If it was just about money we would have seen massive improvements long before now, and we haven't. More money won't achieve what it's already failed to achieve.
What's needed is a far smaller team of absolutely driven elites. Who are currently aged between 11 and 13 on the women's side (many female Olympic gold medallists tend to peak at 15-17 these days) and 14-16 on the men's side.