French star and Olympic gold medalist Yannick Agnel has taken another change of course, moving on to his third coach in two years and leaving Bob Bowman and the North Baltimore Aquatic Club.
According to several French media outlets, the 22-year old will return to train at the club Mulhouse under newly-resigned National Team director Lionel Horter. This comes after roughly a year-and-a-half training with Bowman and his impressive group that includes Conor Dwyer, Michael Phelps, Allison Schmitt, and sometimes Chase Kalisz, among others.
Agnel is the second big-name swimmer to leave that group: Tunisian Ous Mellouli returned to Southern California earlier this year, citing “the Southern California lifestyle” as the primary reason for his move.
Agnel had a high-profile time at NBAC. He got significantly more exposure to racing Americans during his time stateside, but the ultimate result wasn’t his best at the European Championships. He recovered by meet’s end to win individual bronze in the 200 free, but he was overall disappointing, including being left off of France’s gold medal winning 400 free relay.
More was expected of the defending World Champion and Olympic Champion in the 200 free.
Bowman’s public comments were supportive of the move.
“I support him 100% in his approach. Lionel (Horter) is a world-class coach, and Yannick will grow under his control,” the American coach said. “MY goal is to help Yannick succeed, no matter where it leads.”
Interesting that the best swimmer of all time had the same coach his entire career.
I don’t know why everybody is so surprised, September 16th is “International Leave Your Swim Coach Day”! Everybody knows that! 😉
Oh good! This article reached 50 comments, so the people who run this website can be happy they have enough irrelevent readers! Of course, I make jokes in my comments, so I’m more relevent than everybody else! 🙂
I think people are reading into this too much and are reaching for a story. Every program, even an elite program, is not a good fit for everyone. If Yannick feels it wasn’t the right program for him then he should go to a program that better fits his training needs. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Time is ticking and Yannick needs to do what is best for him. I wish him well. I’ve had the pleasure of watching several NBAC practices with Bob Bowman coaching his elite group. He does not concentrate just on Phelps. In fact I felt he pretty much left Phelps alone. Bob is very tuned into the practice. It’s was fun to watch during… Read more »
Off topic but I’ve just read something hilarious on the US swimming website.
Every Tuesday I read the 20 Question Tuesday, an interview with someone in the world of swimming.
This week, Brent Rutemiller.
Link here.
http://usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&itemid=6368&mid=14491
Question 15.
Answer. For some other sites, people will be, “Wow, they got 50 comments”, but the reality is that only a few are relevant.
I’m wrong or he talks about swimswam? 😆
If yes, it’s not good to be jealous of the rivals’ success like that.
Hopefully I’m not among the non “relevant” comments! 😆
bobo – we think you’re very relevant.
I remember the one time they let me do 20 Questions Tuesday. Bob Schaller is fantastic. Then someone at USA Swimming decided to pull it.
That probably tells you all you need to know. :-).
Yep.
ummm…Braden please elaborate!!!! Why did they pull it? or did the other website use their connections and pull it?
I find the Agnel situation is paradoxical.
He was suffering and was not happy training under Pellerin and yet it produced results.
He was happy and excited training under Bowman (by reports of his own accounts and others) and yet it didn’t produce results.
Laure Manadou also had the same thing with Lucas.
Is this phenomena more common to top french swimmers than others?
ASWIMFAN, I think a few trolls are enjoying voting down your comments. It is pretty funny, actually.
I think it is common to any great swimmer, not the French swimmers alone. What is interesting is that few if any US swimmers venture outside of the US for extended training periods. The world has plenty of great coaches and it wouldn’t hurt American swimmers to train somewhere else for 6 – 12 months to experience something different.
The only people who know why Agnel was not happy at NBAC are Agnel and Bowman, and neither of them is speaking.
Official words from Agnel tonight. I try to translate in English.
“The year has been excellent about the state of mind. It has been a great adventure but the American method has been too hard to digest.”
(Sorry for interfering in his words but I would like to ask him what is the American method. There’s not one American method. Every American coach has his own training method. David Marsh doesn’t train like Teri McKeever who doesn’t train like Bob Bowman. He should have said: “the Bowman’s method has been too hard to digest.” I don’t like the generalities! 🙂 It doesn’t serve the education of ignorant people. If you knew what we read on the French sport forums.… Read more »
What?? He was about to quit in 2013??
Whatever the reason, I think he has made a good decision. He would not get results he expects when he even doubts the effectiveness of his own training.
And better do it now than waiting after Kazan. Who can guarantee he will be faster than ever in Kazan by staying with Bowman?
Now I’m intrigued to know all the differences between “french method” and “usa method”.
Another thing, whose idea was it to re-train and re-focus Agnel on 200-400? Agnel or Bowman?
Agnel achieved his greatness in 2012 after he dropped 400 after disappointing result in 2011 Shanghai.
Bowman also made Phelps try 400 free in 2005, to pretty bad results.
As I posted on the ‘other site’…
Just throwing it out there – but with so many swimmers switching coaches in search of different programmes recently, I wonder when we’re going to get someone venturing into China to try out the programmes there?
For Yannick especially it would probably be a fascinating experience to train with Sun Yang in Zhejiang. They have fabulous facilities there too, much better than NBAC. Sprinting is also picking up really well too in China too.
The cultural differences there are probably why people haven’t tried, but it would be amazing to see someone trying it out, if only for something like an altitude training camp in Kunming as a test.
Maybe some Russians will go to China to try out the turtle soup.
I think that people should have a look at what the Japanese swimmers are doing. Hagino and co. seem to have made a great leap forward, on a lighter program.
I think this is a poor decision. Bowman has a proven track record, but his swimmers have one off performance and people start doubting and swimmers flee. Regardless, it takes time to adjust to new training programs, as evidenced by swimmers in many top college programs that dont perform well freshmen year only to come back strong in their upperclassmen years.
Does anyone have any theories for the flat performance of the NBAC group this year? Pan Pacs was generally fairly slow, but theres no denying that NBAC didn’t perform as well as in past years. I think there were potentially too many stars in the group – not that any of them weren’t getting the attention they need (and… Read more »
Lotte Friis, Conor Dwyer, Tom Luchsinger, Allison Schmitt, Gillian Ryan and Yannick Agnel had a bad summer. But perhaps for different reasons, I don’t know.
Mr Phelps is Mr Phelps so it’s hard to judge but his comeback has been successful.
Becca Mann and Sierra Schmidt have been great.
And Cierra Runge had a dream summer.
My theory is that they never really recovered from all the training they’ve put in this year. Doing triples for a month or more in the OTC at altitude is insane, especially with the intensity this group must be working with. I believe that with some adjustments by Bowman all this work will pay off for them either next year or for 2016. Bob is a genius, he knows what needs to be done and what needs to be changed. I just wish Yannick was patient enough to wait it out. Good luck to him though, he seems to be a really down to earth all around nice guy!!
Murray once said “we only taper once every four years”. NBAC founder
This is the point