France’s L’equipe has gotten a jump on a planned Yannick Agnel press conference on Wednesday. After the French Federation announced late last week that Agnel would swim only relays at this year’s World Championships, and would come to the United States to train, L’equipe within the last hour has announced that Agnel will be coming to train with Bob Bowman.
Bowman is best known as the man who coached Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt to a fistful of Olympic gold medals over the last 15 or so years. Since Phelps’ retirement, Bowman has signed on as a consultant to federations around the world, and among his first assignments were working with British Swimming to analyze their Olympic performance, and the Turkish Federation in an effort to increase their international stature.
SwimVortex.com’s Craig Lord reported earlier this week that Agnel was visiting Bowman while his team at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club was in a training camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and the news from L’equipe seems to finalize that those are the plans.
More details will be available Tuesday after Agnel’s press conference.
i only have a few words and a couple numbers to describe this.
faster than 1:42.00 and 3:40.07
After the 2008 Olympics Bowman said he got lots of offers from international swimmers to train with him but he turned them all down stating, “We have enough good swimmers in the United States.” For some reason, that isn’t clear, he changed his mind.
It can be looked at in two ways: 1. It can hurt the USA if Agnel gets faster and beats the United States athletes in competition. Or 2. It can help the USA if Agnel boosts the level of those he trains with (likely Phelps among others).
“Training swimmers from a country other than your own is unforgivable”-Jonty Skinner
Haha.
Mr. Skinner should have been more accurate. Considering the fact he was born in South Africa and, according to Wikipedia, began his coaching career in 1978 in California, I would rephrase his wording as follows:
“Training swimmers from a country other than you feel your own is unforgivable”
Jonty was a victim of apartheid via boycotts. The USA gave him a home & sporting opportunity just as France gave many American black singers a home & artistic opportunity .some like Jonty stayed.
Regarding Jonty – his coaching principles were not universally agreed by US coaches. At the coffee bar outside the Sydney Olympic programme , an American coach asked me some questions on Ian Thorpe. They were very keen to know if there were any more in the pipeline. I correctly said – no .i said – he just had everything going for him – what has happened to you guys?
Oh that Jonty has them all just doing sprints & I doubt we will ever get super… Read more »
I’ve always personally wondered why we don’t have more of our athletes training internationally, even if only for a year or two. For example, if you swim the mile, why wouldn’t you want to train with Denis Cotterell? If you’re Katie Hoff or Kate Ziegler and trying to resurrect your swimming career, why not take a chance with Pellerin or Lucas? If you’re Amanda Weir and risking losing your spot on relays to the new young crop of sprinters, or Christine Magnuson and trying to get your 100 fly back, why not train with Shannon Rollason or Jacco Verhaeren? If you’re Garrett Weber-Gale, why not see what you can learn from training at CN Marseille with Romain Barnier (especially when… Read more »
Or who would not want ( sprinters at least) to train under Gennadi Touretski if you are a guy or Paul bergen if you were a girl..
Bergen probably created the best female swimmer I´ve seen in action ever (I´m 27.. so I would consider from 1992 to now only)
Then too bad you didn’t see Bergen at his best – Tracy Caulkins – unbelievable!!
Just for the record.
Would bergen be a traitor for some here? Coaching Brujin, who reigned over Torres, Coughlin, Thompson..
And.. I would like to be sure that Caulkins could be better than Inge.. Don´t think so.
How Bergen pick up the techniques developed by Touretski (Popov and Klim) and translated it perfecly for women swimming (De Brujin)
Caulkins’ career was interrupted by the ’80 Olympic boycott but barring that and the steroids in use then, I’d say Caulkins was better overall. She set world records in so many different strokes/events. de Brujin was very dominant but over a smaller number of events. But it’s hard to compare them
I agree with Liquidassets.
Though I’m surprised the Stockwell-Caulkins children have not become great swimmers given such amazing genes they inherited from their parents.
Inky wasn’t all Paui though; she was a joint project between Bergen and Jacco Verhaeren. She split her training time between Tualatin Hills and Eindhoven. She was also dating Verhaeren at the time, which must have made for an interesting coaching relationship.
And look at the result of that joint project!
If only Cate Campbell goes to Verhaeren for a few months sprint clinic every year (especially to improve her start), she’ll be swimming 52mid-52low by Rio.
I don’t mind that Bowman will be coaching Agnel. It might be different if swimming was more of a team sport year-round, with all the swimmers of each country training together all or much of the time, like they do in water polo, etc. Swimming is so individually focused that there aren’t even team medals at the Olympics or World Championships, let alone smaller meets. Nationals is the only big meet with team points but even then often elite swimmers don’t even swim the relays. Swim fans seem to like good races and having swimmers of all countries at their best potential, (e.g. most American fans seem to be very disappointed when a foreign swimmer is sick, injured, or otherwise… Read more »
On the flip side to the argument concerning should coaches coach foreign athletes in the coaches home country. What does everyone feel about coaches leaving their home countries to coach that countries domestic talents. Is it a vastly different argument or is the pressure and loyalty squarely focused on the athlete and relaxed for the coach (coaches that come to mind, Bud McAllister in Canada, Bill Sweetnam, Paul Bergen, even Bob Bowman assisting the Turkish federation which is slightly different but in the same stream)
Very interesting discussion about should a coach help other athletes than his/her own nationalities.
In my opinion coaches don’t represent a country. No one gives coaches medals if their athletes success. A reward comes in the form of improved market value of his/her skills. No one remember Mr. Bowman as a coach of USA but merely as a coach of Phelps.
In the globalized world the discussion about who represents a particular country begins to be rather outdated anyway. I mean in sport. It would be somewhat same to regard a global corporation as a representative of single country. And why? Just because its headquarters is located in it. To me an american citizenship should not prevent Mr. Bowman… Read more »
Happy to see I have launched an interesting discussion.
And Just consider we are talking about swimming only..
People should call other sports (Gymnastic, weightlifting, judo and others) where many countries (US included) took top coaches from USRR or former USRR countries, JPN and others to build up an amazing team..
I ask, the guys who are saying US born coaches should not train foreign Swimmers, did they said in the past that foreign coaches should not train US Gymnasts, Judokas, weightlifters??
Considering the Olympic history of the sport and why it changed from allowing 3 representatives from each country to participate down to 2 -so the US would not sweep the medals. Given the rise in competitiveness globally as foreign athletes train with US colleges (from previous articles on this site), US coaches training foreign athletes (post-grad), and the overall improvement in global swim programs, has there been or should there be any push to have 3 representatives in each event in the Olympics? Seems like the playing field is a lot more level than it use to be.
Daven – I think that would be fun to see, you’d probably get a truer representation of the best in the world, but I imagine it’s bad for business. Seeing three of the same country on a podium isn’t good for Olympic marketing; the IOC would probably rather see more countries get in on the fun, because then that’s more money that they can suck out of more places (and, arguably, it’s more entertaining for the majority of the world’s sports fanbase.)
Seems to have been a sudden decision (3 days). What will he do the rest of his life outside of the pool in Baltimore ? No info on this ? I had the feeling he was a rather bookish kind of guy.with a willingness to study.
In Bobo Gigi’s link, Agnel says he won’t be going to university in the United States because his goal is to work on his swimming, but that there might be a project afoot with Sciences Po… maybe they’ll allow him to take online classes?
Perhaps Yannick read the article about how inclusive American swimming was .
Cela pour moi – Il dit et viola!
🙂