Question about GB Swimming

With Team GB's swimmers not winning managing to win any Gold medals in this London Olympics, what can be done to improve this for the Rio Games in 4 years time, as it is obvious that we just aren't producing the young swimmers at the moment who are natural born champions/winners apart from perhaps Becky Adlington. Is this to do with the fact that our swimmers are physically not as strong as those of the other nations such as the USA (with giants like Missy Franklin, Alison Schmidt and Michael Phelps), or is our inability to perform in Olympic meets due to the mental aspect of not being able to cope and handle the very demanding pressures from a nation which expects a lot of success in the pool?

Maybe borrow some Yanks.......................a bit likethe 10,000 metres strategy

I think it's hard when America are so dominant for any country, not just us, to keep up.

Pour money into it?

It isn't as easy as many assume, alot has gone into British cycling to get to the point where our teams are challenging world records rather than the opposition

I mean if you look where we are compared to nations with far bigger populations are we're doing exceptionally well

It's very simple: bring back Bill Sweetenham. The british women performed poorly - not achieving seasons best or matching personal bests. Matching personal bests would have seen several gold medals in the pool. Whereas the cyclists, rowers, and athletes have performed and out performed, the British swimmers in particular the women performed way below par. Even Rebecca performed below her own personal par not achieving seasons best. After her success at Beijing aged only 19, she said she couldn't handle the "fame", and from there she hasn't really progressed. Shes only 23 and she should have been able to achieve new personal bests for her home olympics. She did well in winning two bronzes but she could have achieved much more. She did better than the other british women however.

Michael Jamieson who won a silver in the mens 200 metre breast stroke broke his personal best three times and improved it by several seconds.

From the BBC
"too many swimmers failed to achieve either their personal best or even their fastest time this season."

"Put simply, medals means money and without hitting their minimum target of five, British Swimming puts itself in significant danger of a cut from the £25.1m they have received over the last four years."

"The £264m UK Sport divides between all Olympic sports is expected to remain the same for the Rio 2016 campaign, but with the likes of judo and canoeing performing well in London, they can expect a larger slice of the funding pie."

"Since Beijing British Swimming has invested heavily in five International Training Centres [ITCs] and currently support 38 swimmers in their elite programme. That number could be cut if funding was reduced."

Hence so far with swimming receiving 9.5 % of the funding they have contributed
0% to the gold
12.5% to the silver
25% to the bronze.

These percentages will decrease as the other events of the Olympics progress.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19133445

Nore Staat wrote:It's very simple: bring back Bill Sweetenham. The british women performed poorly - not achieving seasons best or matching personal bests. Matching personal bests would have seen several gold medals in the pool. Whereas the cyclists, rowers, and athletes have performed and out performed, the British swimmers in particular the women performed way below par. Even Rebecca performed below her own personal par not achieving seasons best. After her success at Beijing aged only 19, she said she couldn't handle the "fame", and from there she hasn't really progressed. Shes only 23 and she should have been able to achieve new personal bests for her home olympics. She did well in winning two bronzes but she could have achieved much more. She did better than the other british women however.

Michael Jamieson who won a silver in the mens 200 metre breast stroke broke his personal best three times and improved it by several seconds.

Agreed. Women proved a little 'soft' again much like the days before Sweetenham was brought in. Trouble is if I understood things correctly Sweetenham didn't get on well with Sparkes so he's not likely to be called back by those currently in charge.

John Cregan wrote:Maybe borrow some Yanks.......................a bit likethe 10,000 metres strategy

So, John..... precisely which Yank ran for Britain in the 10'000 metres..? Methinks you refer to a certain citizen of San Diego, but hey, there's no law against living abroad and yet still representing your country, is there..? Or would you like me to run through the ROI football teams of the last thirty or so years..?

Point taken...?


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They need to master strategic planning and team management. By being number one in that field our cricketers, rowers and cyclists have achieved great success.

Having said that the type of performances we get in the Velodrome are hugely unlikely in Swimming. It is such an international sport these days that its unrealistic to think that anybody other than USA or China could ever 'rule the pool'.

Nore Staat wrote:From the BBC
"too many swimmers failed to achieve either their personal best or even their fastest time this season."

"Put simply, medals means money and without hitting their minimum target of five, British Swimming puts itself in significant danger of a cut from the £25.1m they have received over the last four years."

"The £264m UK Sport divides between all Olympic sports is expected to remain the same for the Rio 2016 campaign, but with the likes of judo and canoeing performing well in London, they can expect a larger slice of the funding pie."

"Since Beijing British Swimming has invested heavily in five International Training Centres [ITCs] and currently support 38 swimmers in their elite programme. That number could be cut if funding was reduced."

Hence so far with swimming receiving 9.5 % of the funding they have contributed
0% to the gold
12.5% to the silver
25% to the bronze.

These percentages will decrease as the other events of the Olympics progress.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19133445

A very good analysis of the political situation, and of course, funding is relevant. Without it, we will inevitably suffer. I think UK Sport should hold its nerve and sustain the level of the swimming budget. I think some of our young swimmers at these Games did as well as could be expected and Jamieson looks like a very strong prospect in the finest traditions of British breast stroke.

It has to be recognised that the US collegiate system is tailor made for producing world class swimmers in large numbers, from which they can select the very best and with their wealth of experience in conditioning high performance swimmers to peak for major championships, they will always be the major medal winners in the pool. We simply don't have anything remotely resembling that kind of structure.

Usually, US dominance is tempered, to an extent, by Australia, but they had a 'mare at these Games. It has to be said too, that of the 30 swimmers that made up the US team, the Phelps / Lochte / Franklin / Schmidt axis was significant. Those four swimmers between them won 13 of America's 16 gold medals and 23 medals overall from a total of 30 in the pool. Discounting the "big four", the other 26 swimmers in the squad won 3 golds and 4 silver / bronze (notwithstanding relay teams).


They won't have Phelps at the next Olympics and Lochte will be 32 years old. Regardless of who replaces those two, the US team will be weaker. You don't just get a new Michael Phelps out of the box when the old one goes past its sell by date.

The issue of size is relevant I think. Swimming is a sport in which the participants perform in the horizontal position. A six foot + giant like Missy Franklin will have a longer arm span and therefore greater leverage per stroke than her, usually more elfin, British counterpart. Not only that, it could be argued that due to her size, she's actually swimming a shorter distance..!! And that additional arm length can come in handy when it comes to a close finish and reaching to touch the wall first.

So there is plenty of food for thought there. Many factors to consider. Over to you.

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Shelsey93 wrote:They need to master strategic planning and team management. By being number one in that field our cricketers, rowers and cyclists have achieved great success.

Having said that the type of performances we get in the Velodrome are hugely unlikely in Swimming. It is such an international sport these days that its unrealistic to think that anybody other than USA or China could ever 'rule the pool'.

you dont need to rule the pool or find the new michael phelps, achieving a couple of gold medals is already nice. there is enough availables for that. the dutch, the french, the south africans got some, even lithuania got one. one way to achieve that is to specialise in one of the 4th disciplines and create a super club somewhere in the uk for the talent to train and improve together. swimming is also becoming a sport for youngsters and very few now will be able to compete 2 olympics so talent hunting has to be improved.

Jennifer1984 wrote:

John Cregan wrote:Maybe borrow some Yanks.......................a bit likethe 10,000 metres strategy

So, John..... precisely which Yank ran for Britain in the 10'000 metres..? Methinks you refer to a certain citizen of San Diego, but hey, there's no law against living abroad and yet still representing your country, is there..? Or would you like me to run through the ROI football teams of the last thirty or so years..?

Point taken...?


.

I have no idea who is a citizen of San Diego.................I was making a light hearted remark on the Somalian heritage of Mo Farah, who, by the way is an incredible athlete.......................................

John Cregan wrote:

Jennifer1984 wrote:

John Cregan wrote:Maybe borrow some Yanks.......................a bit likethe 10,000 metres strategy

So, John..... precisely which Yank ran for Britain in the 10'000 metres..? Methinks you refer to a certain citizen of San Diego, but hey, there's no law against living abroad and yet still representing your country, is there..? Or would you like me to run through the ROI football teams of the last thirty or so years..?

Point taken...?


.

I have no idea who is a citizen of San Diego.................I was making a light hearted remark on the Somalian heritage of Mo Farah, who, by the way is an incredible athlete.......................................

Really..? OK... I assumed you said about "Yanks" because Mo Farah has a home in San Diego that he uses when he is over there training with Galen Rupp. I don't quite see the connection between Yanks and Somalians, but hey, I'll roll with it.

My bad at misunderstanding you. Assumption is the mother of all man sausage ups..!!

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Ok.......seeing as the article was despairing at the lack of UK Swimming Golds..........i suggested "borrow some Yanks".......................Coz they have some good ones!!!!

Did anyone listen to the live interview which the current GB Performance Director of Swimming did, in which he states or believes that we need to find more swimmers in order to improve our chances of finding the next young swimmer who can become a world and olympic champion? Is he right or wrong to emphasis a quantity over quality?

We cant be great at everything. The U.S swimming strength can only be challenged by China in the future because they have the population and resurces. Britain should concentrate on developing and maintaining areas we are strong. I think the investment needed to put us anywhere near the U.S would be too costly and difficult to bridge and drain us of resources needed in areas where we have better chances of winning. Our rowing and cycling teams are the envy of the world.

Gordy wrote:We cant be great at everything. The U.S swimming strength can only be challenged by China in the future because they have the population and resurces. Britain should concentrate on developing and maintaining areas we are strong. I think the investment needed to put us anywhere near the U.S would be too costly and difficult to bridge and drain us of resources needed in areas where we have better chances of winning. Our rowing and cycling teams are the envy of the world.

So you are saying/believe that we should just give up on the swimmers altogether as they haven't got a cat's in hells chance of winning a gold medal in a Olympics or a World Meet, and insteas tjhrow our limited resources and finances on supporting those other sports that are likely to produce a wealth of such Olympic and World champions?

The fact is that we have a host of good to great swimmers right now. The issue is why did so many perform so poorly in the Olympics.

teassoc wrote:The fact is that we have a host of good to great swimmers right now. The issue is why did so many perform so poorly in the Olympics.

A combination of not being able to handle the huge weight of expectations placed on the slender shoulders of the swimmers from the public and spectators (similar to the pressures faced by British tennis players who play at Wimbledon), and also swimmers from other countries particularly China, USA, Holland, Belarus, were just too good for many of our swimmers in this Olympic meet, but this is too easy an excuse to use for performing so poorly as true champion athletes can/know when to produce the goods when the time comes to do so.

I honestly believe its down to the coaching and the whole model for the swimming. So much energy has been put into the cycling for fantastic results. There are a few very good Dutch trainers here that have done wonders for the Dutch team, get them in for 4 years and see what they can do.

teassoc wrote:The fact is that we have a host of good to great swimmers right now. The issue is why did so many perform so poorly in the Olympics.

We have a host of good swimmers, but only Adlington can be considered to be in the great category, and then only just.

If you look at Cycling we have about five all-time greats - Cavendish, Wiggins, Hoy, Kenny and Pendleton - on one team.

Part of the problem is that we over-performed in the pool last Olympics, with Addlington taking the two golds and with solid back-up from the rest of the team. Traditionally, we've only taken 2 or 3 medals per Olympics, with golds being something of a rarity especially amongst the women.

The one area where we have traditionally performed reasonably well is in men's breaststroke events (wilkie, Goodhew, Moorcroft, Gillingham and now Jamieson). Perhaps we should look at focussing resources here rather than across the board.

Oh, and you do realise if the American swim team was a country, they would be 4th on the medals table overall, and Phelps would single handedly be in the top 10.

Traditionally GB&NI haven't been "good" at track cycling. Traditionally GB&NI haven't been "good" at road cycling. The Brailsford + Boardman + (...) + funding has shown what strong organisation can do for a sport. Compare that to the LTA + Draper management of GB Tennis (best assessed through Davis Cup & Fed Cup performances).

The main issue is not that the swimmers "didn't get many medals", the issue is that they didn't get seasons best times or personal best times (in general).

I think the "search for giants" programmes is something that needs to be maintained and added to. I also believe more work can be done in improving a sports culture within schools, colleges and university. There is far too much focus on learning to "pass exams": something that past governments have created.

Nore Staat wrote:The main issue is not that the swimmers "didn't get many medals", the issue is that they didn't get seasons best times or personal best times (in general).

Exactly.

Not about unrealistic expectations. Medals would have followed if the team had performed at it's highest level.

Maybe Miley's relatively poor performance on the first day coupled with China's staggering performance in the same race got into their heads. A return to the pre-Sweetenham days of women, in particular, flopping at the highest level come the big day.

NS
The (...) needs to include Peter Keen (Boardman's coach, the instigator of great analysis of track rides) and Jan van Eyden, the sprint coach.

With regard to swimming, it's true and disappointing that very few of the swimmers achieved even season's bests. I wonder if part of that is because of the competetive selection policy - the swimmers had to win / place in the trials to be selected, so had to peak for that, and then train on and peak again for the Games, which they haven't done very well. Athletics has a similar system, and some (e.g our 400m men) haven't shown well either.

I agree about the need to improve the sporting culture in schools (less worried about college and University, as it's too late to develop someone by then, although I guess they could have a role in exposing and converting talented sportspeople to minority sports like volleyball or handball). I think this was the point Lord Moinahan was making and that Jeremy Hunt spectacularly missed in saying that lottery funding was showing results - the top end of many sports are performing well, but we need to keep encouraging youngsters onto their bikes / into the pool etc so that there is someone coming through below the current generation. If we don't, we'll be like Australian swimming at the moment - great with Thorpe and Perkins but now relatively speaking in the doldrums.

Dummy - You raise a very good point their and I have just touched on it with a piece on the 'day 10 thread'...

For the athletics the coming day's are the important ones for Van Commenee because it will show how we are doing in terms of depth in the sport..he has done alot to improve athletics in recent years..he will be expecting a fair few finalists but more importantly will be looking for people to hit SB & PB's....

These next 3 days will determine the spread of funding which UK Athletics get and for some of our athletes will determine whether they will continue to be funded or whether money will be withdrawn and they will have to go it alone..

With Gemili (football) and Okoye (ex Rugby) doing so well I fully expect the UK Athletics to really start looking at those on the fringes of other sports in the future...one would hope so anyhow because it is a proven method in recent times of creating success in Athletics.

This is an interesting trend which has formed and I really do hope that we do (not just in Athletics but other sports) begin to look at the fringes of other sports where people dont quite make it because I think this is the way forward now.

News this morning is that Australia is going to launch a review of why they didn't do so well in the swimming. Germany I believe also have been disappointed. So GB is not alone in expecting better results.

GB women's team before the Games was being touted as being one of the top swimming teams based on this year's performances. We ended it as one of the weakest in terms of medals of all the major swimming nations.

The talent is already there. I strongly believe, it's not a question of unreasonable expectations or not having the talent. Sweetenham had created a very strong team based on World Class swimmers in most of the women's events. Big question now is how did they all suddenly lose so much form in the space of 4 months?

The women’s team in particular underperformed IMO. There were opportunities for medals if individuals had executed their best, which is generally what you have to do to make the podium at the Olympics.

Hannah Miley underperformed in the 400m IM.
I felt Rebecca Adlington swam well in the 400m but she wasn’t anywhere near her best in the 800m.
Very surprised with Ellen Gandy in the 200m fly
Fran Halsall?
The list goes on…

In terms of improvement, there’s a formula which many former athletes from all sports have talked about;
1. Recruit individuals to the sport
2. Coaching
3. Competition

John Cregan wrote:Maybe borrow some Yanks.......................a bit likethe 10,000 metres strategy

do you actually know anything about Mo's life?

by the way the way that china are embracing swimming I think we would be barking up the wrong tree to really get lots atheltes in to swimming.

However something is up with the coaching- not enough pbs's were going on in the pool. so we do need a change within the management and the coaching- we have clearly stagnated

Gymnastics is clearly the biggest plus this time around. we have become competitive and if they keep improving we could get plenty of gold at rio

British Swimming says it will carry out a thorough review following a "disappointing" Olympic campaign.

Rebecca Adlington won two bronze medals and Michael Jamieson a silver, but that was short of UK Sport's target of between five and seven podium finishes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19226956

All comes down to talent pool and the chinese in particular can break athletes across the board until they find someone who doesn't break combine that with other seemingly obvious issues with the chinese team and its hard to see how you can compete. The same is true of America but to a lesser extent, in a few years they will be surpassed in the pool.

I find it very hard to believe that the majority of these young swimmers are clean so take the results with a pinch of salt. Ledecky and Shiwen being prime examples, you don't hear of such massive improvements by other nations swimmers.

Nore Staat wrote:British Swimming says it will carry out a thorough review following a "disappointing" Olympic campaign.

Rebecca Adlington won two bronze medals and Michael Jamieson a silver, but that was short of UK Sport's target of between five and seven podium finishes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19226956

A thorough review.............What a load of codswallop. The British swimmers who competed and put their lives on hold for 4 years deserve better than that. The Brits do like " a thorough inquiry" though!!

We 100% need to do something about the swimmers. We didnt acheive to our expectations, and it is also a sport of prime importance in the Olympics due to its medal weighting..

"The Brits do like " a thorough inquiry" though!!"

Yeah its why on the whole we are acheviers, You should take that on board John.

mystiroakey wrote:We 100% need to do something about the swimmers. We didnt acheive to our expectations, and it is also a sport of prime importance in the Olympics due to its medal weighting..

"The Brits do like " a thorough inquiry" though!!"

Yeah its why on the whole we are acheviers, You should take that on board John.

Are you listening to yourself?!!..............."WE ARE ACHIEVERS" and us little leprachaun people should take it on board to be more like ye!!!!

Are you a little leprechaun John. Thanks for the infomation but this isnt a date, i dont need to know who or what you are..

We ought to seek out the freaky physical specimens - Missy Franklin for example being over 6'1, with an arm span of 6'3 and size 13 feet. Pretty sure she wasn't made for land.

So what your saying is no leprechauns- And we need to discriminate?

size 13 feet. errr

I'd say by being 3rd with a population of around 60-70m with achieving somethiing

EnglishReign wrote:We ought to seek out the freaky physical specimens - Missy Franklin for example being over 6'1, with an arm span of 6'3 and size 13 feet. Pretty sure she wasn't made for land.

To be fair, that's not a bad suggestion. Steve Redgrave's rowing program just asked for women over 5'11'' and men over 6'3''. It's how we get one of our gold medallists as well. We could do the same thing in swimming.

Its also worth noting that swimming is predominantly a young person's sport. I can't think of another sport where 15 and 16 year olds comes along and can win multiple golds and dominate a sport.

This is a double edged sword for Britain:

1) You can turn around a nations fortunes more quickly than sports where the peak comes at say 26 because the athletes are 'ready' 10 years sooner
2) You have to be much more organised with finding talent because you can't afford to be late and miss a couple of years like other sports.
3) When you have a 'world beater' in 1 olympics, or even a world championships a couple of years ago, it can often mean nothing because there's another 18 year old appered smashing it.

However, one thing is irrefutable - if you take swimming out of the medal ceremony Britain basically drew with the USA, which is a fantastic achievement and because swimming yields a such disproportionate amount of medals (there more swimming medals than running medals) if you want to vault up the medal table its the sport to focus in. A country with an excellent swimming programme and nothing else could easily finish top 10 in the table. In fact, the USA swimming team would have finished 5th in the table!

Crimey wrote:

EnglishReign wrote:We ought to seek out the freaky physical specimens - Missy Franklin for example being over 6'1, with an arm span of 6'3 and size 13 feet. Pretty sure she wasn't made for land.

To be fair, that's not a bad suggestion. Steve Redgrave's rowing program just asked for women over 5'11'' and men over 6'3''. It's how we get one of our gold medallists as well. We could do the same thing in swimming.

Yeah, I had the rowing program in mind and it makes sense. It's basic physics that swimmers and rowers need to be taller to be the best and that's the platform to work from.

That's not to say that you can't be good if you're smaller than average, you just need to work harder. But swimming and rowing, more than any other Olympic sports I can think of, really are size dependent if you want success.

Yeah, you have to start somewhere and finding those who are physically more attributed to a sport is a good start.

EnglishReign wrote:

Crimey wrote:

EnglishReign wrote:We ought to seek out the freaky physical specimens - Missy Franklin for example being over 6'1, with an arm span of 6'3 and size 13 feet. Pretty sure she wasn't made for land.

To be fair, that's not a bad suggestion. Steve Redgrave's rowing program just asked for women over 5'11'' and men over 6'3''. It's how we get one of our gold medallists as well. We could do the same thing in swimming.

Yeah, I had the rowing program in mind and it makes sense. It's basic physics that swimmers and rowers need to be taller to be the best and that's the platform to work from.

That's not to say that you can't be good if you're smaller than average, you just need to work harder. But swimming and rowing, more than any other Olympic sports I can think of, really are size dependent if you want success.

Rowing a bit less so now with the lightweight classes which I think is a good thing. A sport is always a little more accepted if it can only be excelled in my physical 'freaks'. But still, the point stands.

Gemma Spofforth has all the physical attributes but wasn't able to do her best at the Games. True of same many of her female team mates who left their best performances at the trials (in the same pool!).

They had a lot of talent on show especially on the women's side but consistently under-performed. Maybe they are now lacking something on the mental side as they (at least most of them) as they seemed to have pre-Sweetenham days? (Swimmers in those days were said to have been happy to make the team, as opposed to winning medals).

Another possibility is that they organised the trials too far away from the Games, and couldn't peak twice in the space of those 5 months. The US team on the other hand had their trials much closer to the games and managed to peak perfectly.

Not sure their internal enquiry will explain all those collective disappointment but it will be interesting to see how they explain things and who they chose to replace the US guy in charge.

teassoc wrote:Gemma Spofforth has all the physical attributes but wasn't able to do her best at the Games. True of same many of her female team mates who left their best performances at the trials (in the same pool!).

They had a lot of talent on show especially on the women's side but consistently under-performed. Maybe they are now lacking something on the mental side as they (at least most of them) as they seemed to have pre-Sweetenham days? (Swimmers in those days were said to have been happy to make the team, as opposed to winning medals).

Another possibility is that they organised the trials too far away from the Games, and couldn't peak twice in the space of those 5 months. The US team on the other hand had their trials much closer to the games and managed to peak perfectly.

Not sure their internal enquiry will explain all those collective disappointment but it will be interesting to see how they explain things and who they chose to replace the US guy in charge.

Tend to agree with the timing of the trials theory. Australia also had a lot of swimmers who didn't perform up to the times they put down at the trials , and a number of former swimmers here have suggested Australia might do well to follow the US system.
Another point might be that in the trials the better GB swimmers probably obtained middle lanes fairly easily and were able to go for fast times without too much pressure from competitors - not in all events of course - whereas here they were under pressure right from their heat swims from a lot of other swimmers of equal or better ability. Actually would be interested to see figures on how many swimmers from all countries swam seasons bests ...outside the medal winners it may not have been as many as we assume...
(I do not claim to know , by the way , just speculating.