2020's Vision for the Decade

As a swimmer, Jonty Skinner went down in history as the man who crushed the swimming speed that crushed the rest:  20 days after after American Jim Montgomery clocked a then stunning 49.99sec over 100m freestyle for Olympic gold at Montreal 1976, Skinner, locked out of the race by the apartheid...

2020s Vision - after introducing the theme of Athlete Sustainability, we dip into the archive to see what we learn from the long career of Therese Alshammar and why Sweden's head coach Ulrika Sandmark wants to tap into the wisdom to be had from it Back in 1991, a 13-year-old junior won the Swed...

2020s Vision - Athlete Sustainability and Lessons From Sweden  That Speak Louder After COVID-19 Lockdown There was a sobering moment at the World Aquatics Development Conference in Lund back in January when Ulrika Sandmark, performance head coach of Swedish swimming, put a slide up on the board...

Commentary - 2020s Vision: Athlete A - a review of the Netflix documentary of the Indianapolis Star Investigation in sexual abuse in USA Gymnastics that rocked Olympic sport to its core. A must watch for any with children in sport; and all governors and guardians of sport. Our 2020s Vision series ta...

"When I came back to my native country after all the stories about Hitler I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President...

2020s Vision: The Sunday Essay Today we republish the following essay in our 2020s Vision series for those who missed it - ahead of taking up the theme again in the coming week. First Published March 8: Today is International Women's Day and Swimming World celebrates by looking at the achievements a...

2020s Vision - Swimming Culture - Sunday Essay International Women's Day (IWD) To mark International Women's Day, Swimming World is rolling out a series of features this Sunday, fresh and from the archive, to highlight the achievements and work of  pathfinders in swimming and raising issues that con...

Commentary - The Athlete Voice The eight-year ban imposed Friday on Sun Yang came with a downside for rivals who might have thought they would now get what they consider just rewards: they won't. In its ruling, CAS listed three points that led to a decision that the "ban starts this day and there'll...

2020s Vision: Swimming Culture - Psychology How do the development years of a swimmer contribute to delivering a mentally robust and resilient athlete prepared for the thrill and challenge of performance sport? How can the young swimmers navigate a beat of parents, coaches, schools, physical challen...

2020s Vision: The Athlete-Turned-Coach Voice Petria Thomas, the 100m butterfly champion and a triple gold medallist for Australia at the 2004 Games in Athens, wants a shift in culture in sport to help break down two key barriers to women rising through the ranks of performance coaching. Now high per...

2020s Vision - The Athlete Voice Libby Trickett, four-times Olympic champion, has called on politicians and sports leaders in her country to start putting athletes first as further threats of cuts in funding follow criticism that the Australian Institute of Sport has turned into the home not for pod...

2020s Vision - The Athlete Voice Mack Horton, Duncan Scott, Adam Peaty, Katinka Hosszu, Cate Campbell, Tom Shields, Michael Andrew and all swimmers who have stood up for change in their sport in the past few years are on the right track. That's the view of ... Lord Coe. Sebastian Coe, the h...

2020s Vision: The Athlete Voice The story of Markus Thormeyer reminds us of another way in which The Athlete Voice - about so much more than 'more money and freedom to race where I want' - has been and remains so important when it comes to helping shape the future of sport and make it a healthier pl...

2020s Vision: The Athlete Voice Shane Gould, winner at Munich 1972 of what remains a record five solo medals in the Olympic pool, has urged Swimming Australia to join a sex-abuse redress scheme aimed at delivering justice for victims of historic crimes. Swimming Australia (SA) has not yet signed up...

2020s Vision: Swimming Culture. On a day when Denmark apologised to its swimmers for the harm caused by practices including weigh-ins at which girls and young women athletes were called fat and humiliated in front of their teammates, including boys and men, we take the moment to reflect on lessons ...

2020s Vision: The Athlete Voice Athlete representative groups from around the world have published an open letter calling on the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) Board to match the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) request for an open and public hearing at the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) ...

2020s Vision - Swimming Culture - science and progress - the thoughts of Jonty Skinner  To mark the retirement from coaching of Jonty Skinner, we recall the man's connection to two watershed moments in swimming history, both involving progress in the sprint shoal, the first his own pioneering pace i...

Mary Dowling, Head Age Group Coach at Nations Capital Swim Club, on what parents need to know when it comes to knowing what their children want from them at a swim meet: “Love me and support me and my teammates - and that is it.” Recently I asked my swimmers what they wanted their parents to do at a...

“I was stuck, where a lot of people get stuck, thinking that by feeling like this or blaming other people, it would somehow change the outcome ... Maybe 18 months to two years after the race I had a significant realisation that I was was making a conscious decision to focus on what I’d missed out on...

2020s Vision - The Pro-Athlete Voice: The New World On The Swimmers' Horizon The first theme of 2020s Vision, a year-long look at the challenges for swimmers and swimming in the decade ahead, is The Athlete Voice. In our opening look at the topic, we spoke to Matt Biondi on what the International Sw...