Lange Unhappy with Neethling

DURBAN, South Africa, January 29. DIRK Lange, the German who is the National Team coach for South Africa, had some harsh words for freestyle star Ryk Neethling, who is currently training at the University of Arizona under Frank Busch. Neethling recently missed a training camp and his absence irked Lange. Also missing from the camp were Roland Schoeman, Lyndon Ferns and Suzaan Van Biljon. Schoeman and Ferns also train under Busch at the University of Arizona and, like Neethling, have had high success rates working with the man who guided their collegiate careers.

Lange indicated that he had philosophical differences with Neethling over his training program and further went on to state that he had concerns over whether Neethling will be able to advance out of the preliminaries at March's World Championships in Melbourne. Lange has been the head man in South Africa for almost two years and has used video analysis and psychologists as part of his training setup.

"It's world standard coaching and equipment, I don't know why he is not open to it," Lange told SuperSwimmer. "Ryk has not delivered in long-course in two to three years. He probably knows what works for him but with his recent performances and his time at the trials he won't make the semifinals in Melbourne.

Rushdee Warley, Swimming South Africa's Performance Manager granted Neethling permission to prepare in the United States because of his international accomplishments over the years. At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Neethling was fourth in the 100 free and joined Schoeman, Ferns and Darian Townsend on the then world-record setting 400 free relay.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

Welcome to our community. We invite you to join our discussion. Our community guidelines are simple: be respectful and constructive, keep on topic, and support your fellow commenters. Commenting signifies that you agree to our Terms of Use

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x