It has just been announced that Swimming Australia’s head of high performance, Michael Scott, has resigned and will take on the new role of Chief Executive Officer at Rowing Australia. He will continue with Swimming Australia for the next three months as the organization searches for potential replacements.
Scott, after working five years for British Swimming, was appointed Director of High Performance at Swimming Australia in April 2013. He had previously been Director of the AIS and NSWIS, as well as CEO of the 2007 FINA Worlds organizing committee.
Of Scott‘s departure, Swimming CEO Mark Anderson said, “In his time at Swimming Australia, Michael has led significant change across our sport at the elite level. This has resulted in a clear direction and well-developed plans targeted at attaining success in Rio 2016 and beyond.”
Scott and Anderson came into their roles together in 2013 as Swimming Australia looked for fresh faces to lead it out of a relatively disappointing 2012 Olympic Games that ended with an investigation into several swimmers’ uses of sleeping pill Stilnox as a replacement for alcohol in some pre-Games team bonding.
While under Scott in is role as High Performance Director, Team Australia won three gold and ten silver medals at the 2013 FINA World Championships, and an astounding 57 medals (19 gold) at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and ended 2014 by snagging 26 medals at the Pan Pacific Championships last August.
