Denis Cotterell Announces Retirement from Full-Time Coaching

Photo Courtesy: USA Today Sports

Legendary Australian coach Denis Cotterell has announced that after more than 40 years at the Miami Swimming Club on the Gold Coast, he has stepped down from full-time coaching.

During that stint, Cotterell has seen some major talent come through his program, but no swimmer he coached was more famous than Grant Hackett, widely-regarded as the greatest distance swimmer in history. Under Cottrell’s tutelage, Hackett won gold in the 1500 free at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and four straight World titles in the event in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2005. He held the mile world record for a decade.

In recent years, Cotterell has been working with a group of Chinese elite swimmers that includes three-time Olympic gold medalist freestyler Sun Yang. Cotterell described to the Herald Sun that “it’s a detox from the chlorine” by cutting back his responsibilities so drastically.

Cotterell told the Herald Sun that plans to rent pool space at the Miami pool for the next several weeks before the swimmers leave for the World Championships and that he has no plans of continuing to coach the group through the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Cotterell coached two members of Australia’s 2016 Olympic team, Thomas Fraser-Holmes and Dan Smith, but the two joined other squads after Cotterell told them he would be taking an extended break from coaching after the Olympics.

Cotterell explained that the swimmers he had coached has been his family, as he never got married and had children of his own.

“It was the closest thing I had to a family — every day with a bunch of kids, specifically our own squad, 11 months of the year and [with some swimmers] for 10, 20 years,” he told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

He described coaching as a “ridiculously hard game” that was not ideal for keeping up good relationships. He also explained that, while coaching full-time, he would sleep only four hours per night, but he has managed to up that to eight hours now that he is no longer in charge of a full squad.

More to come. Read more from the Herald Sun by clicking here.

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