Four years after suffering one of their worst performances in Olympic history the Australian Swim Team went into Rio with high hopes of a bounce back performance. Unfortunately they came away from the 2016 Olympic Games with extremely disappointing results once again.
The Australians won three gold, four silver and three bronze finishing second in the medal standings to the United States. They improved on their performance in London where they finished seventh in the medal standings with one gold, six silver and three bronze, but considering the promise they showed heading into Rio there are many who have called their performance a disaster.
After London Swimming Australia conducted a through review of their entire program citing a toxic team environment and poor leadership as two of the main reasons for their failures in 2012. The findings of the review ultimately resulted in a complete overhaul of the organization. In April of 2013 Mark Anderson was hired as the CEO of Swimming Australia, in August of the same year John Bertrand was appointed the organization’s President and just a few months later Jacco Verhaeren was hired as the National Team Head Coach.
In Verhaeren’s time in Australia the team has made some significant improvements. In 2013 the Australians finished fourth at the World Championships with three gold and 10 silver medals in 2015 they finished second with seven gold, three silver and six bronze. There have been 14 new Australian long course records set with one of those being a world record, which was posted by Cate Campbell in the women’s 100 freestyle in July.
The team went into the Olympics with high expectations not only looking to follow up on the their outstanding performance in Kazan, but heading into Rio seven Australian athletes held down the world’s top ranking in at least one event (Campbell and Mitch Larkin sat atop of the world rankings in two events).
The performance of the team has garnered a great deal criticism from both the media and the Australian swimming community. Those who have spoken out feel that the athletes were placed under unnecessary pressure, that the timing of the Olympic Trials did not have the athletes ready to race in Rio and that that the leadership of Swimming Australia may need to be shaken up once again.
Expectations
Australian coaching legend Bill Sweetenham has not been shy with his thoughts on why he believes the team failed to meet their potential. Sweetenham feels that the athletes had unnecessary pressure put upon them, “Every athlete that went to the Olympics felt they had to achieve a minimum of eight gold medals — and probably an expectation of 10,” Sweetenham told The Daily Telegraph.
“Who wants to perform in that environment?,” Sweetenham asks rhetorically. “This time it is not the athletes. This is not an athlete issue. It is a leadership issue.”
After the success the team experienced since 2015 there was a great deal of expectation placed on the athletes by many, but this was something that the Verhaeren stayed away from. In an interview before the Australian Trials he told SwimSwam that he was concerned with athletes maximizing their potential not the number of medals, “We never talk about medals,” explained Verhaeren. “We don’t talk about breaking records. What we want to ensure is that everybody can say live up to their potential and in doing so I am confident we can make some medals what colour and the amount you can never tell, no one can predict.”
In his President’s Message in July Bertrand commended Verhaeren for this approach, “Our Head Coach talks about ‘peak performance’ when it really counts. Remove the consequences of winning or losing, just focus on the job at hand. If our athletes achieve their own peak performances when it really counts, at the Olympics, in their final race, results will follow. No medal count is ever mentioned. I like that. It simplifies all. Leave others to count medals, if they eventuate.”
With many of the Australian athletes not swimming their best when it counted in Rio Verhaeren has the same feelings as the majority of Australians do, “I am like everyone else I think that we should have been better,” Verhaeren told SwimSwam early this week.
The pressure on the athletes may not have come from Swimming Australia itself, but that does not mean the athletes did not feel the squeeze, something Verhaeren was well aware. He is not shying away from the fact that they will need to find new strategies to help the athletes deal with that pressure, “Going into an Olympics without expectations doesn’t happen,” said Verhaeren.
“I think it is more the pressure that people put on themselves opposed to the system. I think at the same time that is no excuse whatsoever. We need to come up with better strategies to deal with expectations.”
Racing Readiness
After having some outstanding performances in the lead up to the Games only five of 26 finals swims resulted in lifetime bests. Many, including another Australian coaching legend Laurie Lawernce, have suggested that the solution to this problem would be to mimic the United States strategy of having the trials much closer to the Games. The Australian trials were held from April 7th-14th whereas the United States trials ran from June 25th-July 2nd.
“This is going to be the important part of the our review,” said Verhaeren. “This is the first Olympic campaign for Australia that I was involved in and I think there is something to say for selecting a little bit closer to the meet compared to selecting a little bit further out from the meet.”
“I am not against or for either one of those. Both will have their challenges.”
“Whatever we are going to choose we need to trial it first. This is the reason that having trials this year closer to the Olympics was a no go. Of course we talked about it, but it is never a good idea to do something that someone has never done before and try to change that in an Olympic year.”
“Now we have four years of rethinking and it could go both ways.”
The timing of trials is not the only factor to consider when preparing the Australian athletes to race under the bright lights of the Olympics. The amount of exposure that they have to racing at a high level is another aspect that will be examined. Geoff Huegill, who won a silver and bronze at the 2000 Olympics, has suggested that Australian athletes take advantage of training in the United States college system, which will increase the frequency of facing tougher competition.
Verhaeren agrees that there are some athletes that definitely need exposure to higher quality racing opportunities, especially between trials and their benchmark competition. He also understands that the needs of each athlete are not the same, “I think it is very individual. There are athletes that obviously need more racing and more racing in stronger international competition. There are definitely athletes that are very independent of that and don’t need it at all.”
“The question is for which individuals, coaches and programs is it important?”
He sees two solutions to the problem. The first is finding a way to create higher quality competitions in Australia during their winter months, which is currently not happening, “From trials to the benchmark event it is winter and there are almost no long course competitions in Australia,” says Verhaeren. “Only the competitions we organize ourselves, which are the Grand Prix events.”
“We want more stronger competition in Australia particularly between April and August. Now how do we organize it?”
The second is to seek out that competition beyond their borders, something that they did do this year with the majority of the team attending either the Japan Open or the Arena Pro Swim Series event in Santa Clara with some attending both, “We had some that raced internationally, but maybe not enough. This is something that we have to look for.”
Because of where the country is located the challenges the Australians face with travel are larger than most, but Verhaeren stresses that this is something that can integrated into a well designed quadrennial plan, “It is not ideal to travel up and down Europe or North America, but if you want to go there you have to do this in deliberate periods where you say my training allows it. That will not be something we decide for the whole national team and say everybody needs to go to Mare Nostrum or everybody needs to go to the Japanese Open and Santa Clara. Every coach every athlete needs to make their own decision on that.”
“We need to be and we are supportive of that if it fits into their program.”
The expense of attending these international competition is significant and Verhaeren stresses that the resources are there to help support the athletes and coaches who feel they need to travel, “The resources are never unlimited, but yes we can make sure that athletes can go to international swim meets whether that is in Europe, the USA or Asia. Money has not been a restriction or any coach.”
Leadership
In the same interview with The Daily Telegraph where Sweetenham talked about the unnecessary pressure the athletes were put under he called for the leadership of Swimming Australia to step down and let a new group take over, “The problem lies within the leadership of Swimming Australia,” said Sweetenham. “John Bertrand, [Swimming Australia CEO] Mark Anderson [Swimming Australia High Performance Director] are honourable people, given that, they should do the honourable thing, they should stand down and hand the reins over to a new generation.”
“To fix it? Before a review — John Bertrand must do the honourable thing and walk away.”
“Mark Anderson should do the honourable thing and walk away. Wayne Lomas, perhaps, age group swimming somewhere. And Jacco? He should be appointed the sprint coach for Australian swimming.”
Verhaeren can understand the criticism of himself, but does not understand why people are taking aim at Bertrand and Anderson, “You are only as good as your last performance,” said Verhaeren. “Criticizing myself as the coach of the team I understand, but some of the others I don’t. John Bertrand and Mark Anderson have done a great job and are helping lead us in the right direction.”
Similar sentiments were echoed by Lawrence in an interview with the Herald Sun, “I think John Bertrand has done a fantastic job,” said Lawrence.
“He’s helped create a really good culture among the Dolphins. He’s made them proud to call themselves a Dolphin.”
Team Culture
After the review in 2012 one of the priorities for Verhaeren was to improve the team culture providing the athletes with an environment that would give them the highest likelihood to succeed. The feedback that Verhaeren has received from coaches and swimmers is that they achieved that goal, “The feedback I have gotten is that team culture has been really improved,” said Verhaeren. “That is not only the athletes that is also amongst coaches the way coaches work together, the way team coaches and home coaches work together.”
Team dynamics are much easier to develop when things are going well, as they did in 2014 and 2015, but the true test of a culture is when team members are faced with challenges as they were in Rio, “Culture is only tested when things don’t go well,” said Verhaeren. “Our culture succeeded in the ups and downs.”
“The way they (athletes) stuck together was phenomenal. Cate Campbell was incredibly supportive of others even after having disappointing swims. Unfortunately there is no gold medal for that.”
Even though internally both athletes and coaches have praised the team environment it was called into question in Rio. Australian chef de mission Kitty Chiller told the media that there had been reports of the swim team not buying into the ‘one team’ philosophy that the country’s entire Olympic team had adopted. Chiller had been told that swimmers had removed posters of legendary Australian Olympic figures in the village and replaced the ‘one team’ cheer with ‘our team’, the phrase by which the Dolphins have swum by in the years leading up to the Games.
“I would be disappointed if any team or any sport had moved away from our one team concept,” said Chiller. “I think the majority of sports did buy in to the one team and I think everybody did at certain points in time.”
“On a whole there has been fantastic buy in to ‘one team’. I’m reticent to discuss it here and now because I haven’t discussed it with swimming,”
“I acknowledge some sports have their own identity and it’s difficult to not lose that but incorporate their identity into a broader identity at Games time.”
“But I won’t make any further comment until I’ve had the opportunity to speak with swimming about that.”
Verharen told SwimSwam that since that time he has met with Chiller and that the situation was a misunderstanding that has been resolved, “I am not sure where that story came from. We met with Kitty Chiller, myself and the athletes leaders. It is not something that was true and is not an issue.
“The swimmers were very supportive of other sports after their competition.”
Moving Forward
In the upcoming months Verhaeren will be meeting with the coaches of each of athletes on the team individually and then together as a group to review the entire program, “We will get an understanding of each coach’s thoughts individually,” explained Verhaeren. “Pick everyone’s brains about what we could have or should have done in a particular way for each athlete. When we capture all of that information together we will definitely come together as a group.”
He stressed that despite the emotional response to the team’s performance in Rio there would be no knee jerk reactions and that they will follow through with the review that they had planned before the Olympic Games began, “No one internally is too bothered by the criticism. We will take every idea and every comment that is worthwhile noting for us and take it in if it is something we can use.”
“The review is not a reaction to if things were going great or not so great in Rio. We already had a review in place before Rio started. We already have some structural changes in our program that are not a reaction to the performances in Rio. But changes we already thought we needed to make before Rio started.”
“These changes are not known publicly. Some things might seem like there is a lot going on and it might seem like a panic, but I can tell you there is not a panic. There is of course a review to look at how some succeeded and with other ones why it didn’t work out the way we planned it.”
Verhaeren was also very clear that the evaluation of the program will take into consideration both micro and macro changes to the program, “We will see if it is required to make systematic changes as well,” said Verhaeren. “We are definitely not at a point yet where we can say this is it, this will be the fix for each and everyone.”
“We are trying to look for answers that are very specific for the Olympics as well. That could be the four year cycle, that could be the timing of trials, that could be mindset, that could be a training setup. We don’t have the answers right now.”
“I definitely look forward to sharing these thoughts with the coaches. We have a lot of brain power with these coaches together.”
I can’t complain because I didn’t even follow it & I don’t know anyone who followed it .As a country we have simply moved on . It was stated a few years ago that we should / would just slip back to our usual place with a reasonable representation which is historically about 8 golds total.
We have bigger things to move towards from the political to the social to environmental & not diverting attention to olympic rahrahs . I’d trade every medal we ever earnt for a way forward in the 21st century for our indigenous & our environment in maybe severe climate change . Our political system is at the end of its line – we are just… Read more »
Gina, welcome back!
We missed your out-there commentaries during the Olympics!
By the way, I always get suspicious whenever Aussies claim they are in a higher altered consciousness after a month in Thailand!
Mitch Larkin has also taken the Aust team onto a higher level thru yoga. Its the headstands – they look on life from both sides now , from up & down & all around .It really don’t just race anymore – they are just getting carried along like ions into the zone .When they stand on the block – they are BeingThere & thats all that matters . InTheMomentIng is the new Gold Medal .
Who knows what all might have played into it — taper, interpersonal factors (i.e. Backstrokers dating backstrokers?), health, fateful timing (i.e. C Campbell’s faulty 100 Free start hitting her with a surge of adrenaline that got her out quick but left nothing in her tank for the final 15 meters when both Oleksiak and Manual had the last 8-10 meters of truly memorable Champions) or otherwise — but get just 4 athletes (C Campbell, B Campbell, E Sebohm, Cam McEvoy) performing at their peak at the right moment and the entire outlook of the Aussie results has a different tenor, likely to the tune of 7 or 8 more individual medals, possibly 4 gold. I’m not saying there was anything… Read more »
I know I might be in the minority but I don’t know why Australian swimming folks aren’t celebrating their Rio accomplishments more. I know expectations were high but 2nd place ahead of China, Russia, Japan, all euro countries……. deserves at least a small parade. No? Putin would be renaming an airport if Russia had accomplished this, the Queen would have been knighting people left, right and center if Britain had accomplished what the aussies did. Sure, expectations were high and weren’t met but time to lighten up and give one another pats on the back.
No matter how you want to spin it, Australia swimming flopped badly in Rio.
As Duncan Scott wrote below, this team had C Campbell, B Campbell, E Seebohm, Cam McEvoy and to come home with zero individual medal is catastrophic.
That would be like leading a team with Eamon Sullivan, Stephanie Rice, and Libby Trickett and winning zero individual medal. Worse than London. Much worse.