Bill Sweetenham’s “Tough Love” Keeps the Squeeze on British Swimmers

By Craig Lord

LONDON, May 13. BILL SWEETENHAM, the British national performance director, has predicted that Great Britain will be able to count itself among the world’s leading nations by the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing if swimmers and coaches continue an "unrelenting attitude to improve and change."

Sweetenham’s forecast came after a weekend team performance test in Bath during which the elite of the sport were asked, while in heavy training, to record times within 3 per cent of their best performances. That environment was producing "a group of athletes who can look their rivals in the eye and say: ‘I’m here to beat you, you’re not here to beat me,’" he said.

"We have to have that attitude of invincibility that comes from knowing we’re doing things better than anyone else."

Most swimmers met the challenge, but for those who failed there will be no second attempt at the target: Sweetenham will tighten the screw at the next test event in Swansea at the end of the month, when all must race within 2 per cent of their bests to qualify for finals of races of 200 metres and more or the head-to-head stages of the “skins” races for sprinters.

Come the third test, in June — the last chance for swimmers to qualify for the World Championships in Barcelona in July — it will be 1 per cent, while qualification standards for the Olympics in Athens next year may be set at a time equivalent to a heady eighth-fastest in the world this year.

That constant pressure is felt most keenly by coaches, for whom the director’s "pathway to success" is a daily climb on a steep learning curve. Yet Sweetenham makes no apologies for forcing a cultural change that he says is essential for success.

"The British train was on the wrong track. I was the bully boy who had to change that and I’ve badgered everybody," he said. "The swimmers accepted new philosophies really well, while coaches found it very difficult — but they’re doing it and I’m delighted."

There are those who do not subscribe to Sweetenham’s approach, which he admitted was a balancing act. "If you push too hard, you’ll get a rebellion, but if you don’t push hard enough, you go back to 1912 — the last time a British relay won an Olympic title in the pool," he said. "In Sydney in 2000, Britain had just four individual finalists, and only 13 per cent of swimmers managed best times because they were not capable of racing faster in heats: no finals, no best times, no medals."

And how realistic was it to expect medals as part of the deal in Athens? "From where we came in Sydney, totally unrealistic,” he said. “(But) I didn’t come here for nothing to happen."

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