By Craig Lord<\/p>\n
LONDON, November 10. BILL Sweetenham, Great Britain's outspoken national performance director, is to return to full-time coaching as part of a restructuring process in the wake of Britain\u2019s disappointing return of two bronze medals from this summer\u2019s Olympic Games in Athens. <\/p>\n
Sweetenham, who indentified coaching as \u201cour key weakness,\u201d will also play no role in future short-course teams. John Atkinson, who is promoted from National Youth Coach to Director of World-Class Programmes, will instead lead the 45-strong team to the European Short-Course Championships in Vienna next month. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was spending 80 per cent of my time on administration and 20 per cent on deck,\u201d Sweetenham said. \u201cIt\u2019ll be the other way round from now on . . . John will take on many of the administrative roles that kept me off the deck.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sweetenham described Atkinson as \u201cmy right-hand man off the deck,\u201d while Ian Turner, as National Head Coach at the helm of the senior athlete programme, will remain his \u201cright-hand man in the water.\u201d <\/p>\n
Turner will also take on a four-year responsibility for developing a group of young 200 meter freestyle men capable of racing for an Olympic medal in the 4 x 200 meters relay in Beijing and leading all teams selected to compete at world short-course championships until 2008. Ben Titley will take on the same relay-developing role for women, while Tim Jones will leave Scotland to replace Atkinson as head of youth and age-group programmes. <\/p>\n
\u201cI believe this is the most advanced structure in the swimming world and it will lead to sustained success,\u201d Sweetenham said. \u201cJust like it wasn\u2019t just about Athens, it\u2019s not just about Beijing but about London 2012 and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Craig Lord LONDON, November 10. BILL Sweetenham, Great Britain's outspoken national performance director, is to return to full-time coaching as part of a restructuring process in the wake of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n