lane4
16-04-2002, 12:29 PM
Well the British Long Course Nationals / English Commonwealth Trials are over and we should now air our views about them.
I was not at the meet so I can only properly judge from a pure results perspective. And from this perspective, the meet was a big disappointment to me. Prior to the meet I felt that British swimmers had produced some excellent results in the few months leading up to the games and this, along with the new regime that the NPD has brought in (which most people seem very positive about), would herald some much faster Trials performances than those we saw.
Significantly poor results from the Canadian Trials and relatively poor results from the corresponding Australian meet should have allowed British swimmers to capitalise on their rivals misfortunes by instilling greater confidence and self-belief to move up the rankings much more. Although our Trials have produced a decent amount of Euro, Commy and National records, on the whole the results have not showed a significant step forward in performance level. If the Commy Games were based on the times from these Trials, Australia would win 20 events and England 7 (according to one report I read).
Shepard, Gibson, Mew and Price were the obvious highlights and bring cause for a fair amount of optimism in their respective events. However, PB's at the meet were not as frequent as one might have hoped for and the majority of PB's that did occur seemed marginal. Our best placed swimmer at the 2000 Olympics (Paul Palmer) has not made an individual event or even a relay(!) for the coming Games. He has gone backwards in performance (1:48.1 at last year's Trials, 3 seconds slower this year!) at what for most people was surely a shave and taper meet. Other people who I think did not PB included Karen Pickering, Jo Fargus, Jamie Salter, Mark Foster, Heidi Earp, Jaimie King, Nicola Jackson (not made team), Rebecca Cooke, James Hickman and Steve Parry (sorry if I am wrong about any of them?). James Goddard swam a great 200 back but was a long way adrift of last year's times in his two best events (both IMs) when surely it was not unreasonable to expect him to have been able to move further on from those times he did at the 2001 Euro Juniors?
Kate Haywood did very well on the 100 breast but the meet did not play host to many juniors breaking through into the higher end of the senior ranks and raising our hopes for the short to medium term international future of British swimming. Compare times for such swimmers to last year's meet and not many have made the kind of progress one might have expected.
Scottish (and Scottish based) swimmers had a very good showing at the meet winning several events (mens 200, 400, 1500 free, 100, 200 back, 200 brs; womens 100 breast, 50 free) with several other medal winning performances. Certainly, Scotland seems to have moved on more than England based on the results of this meet. However, again, despite these good Scottish swims, a significant number were not PB's and the PB's that did occur were mostly by very small amounts. Anglo turned Scot Todd Cooper was one who did make a big improvement in performance and as he is still in his teens he could be a great international prospect for Scotland and Britain in the years to come. Wales are obviously struggling to produce international level swimmers at the present time.
I did hear from one fellow coach that the NPD was not best pleased with the results and expressed his displeasure to a number of the coaches at the weekend although I cannot confirm whether this is true or not. Perhaps someone who was there could tell us more?
To summarise: we obviously have a small number very classy swimmers who look like they can do a job for us on the big stage. However, many of our well known and established senior international swimmers do not appear to be progressing (with many going backwards) and there seems to be very few top class juniors coming through to replace them.
I now look forward to hearing some views from the rest of you who read this forum?
I was not at the meet so I can only properly judge from a pure results perspective. And from this perspective, the meet was a big disappointment to me. Prior to the meet I felt that British swimmers had produced some excellent results in the few months leading up to the games and this, along with the new regime that the NPD has brought in (which most people seem very positive about), would herald some much faster Trials performances than those we saw.
Significantly poor results from the Canadian Trials and relatively poor results from the corresponding Australian meet should have allowed British swimmers to capitalise on their rivals misfortunes by instilling greater confidence and self-belief to move up the rankings much more. Although our Trials have produced a decent amount of Euro, Commy and National records, on the whole the results have not showed a significant step forward in performance level. If the Commy Games were based on the times from these Trials, Australia would win 20 events and England 7 (according to one report I read).
Shepard, Gibson, Mew and Price were the obvious highlights and bring cause for a fair amount of optimism in their respective events. However, PB's at the meet were not as frequent as one might have hoped for and the majority of PB's that did occur seemed marginal. Our best placed swimmer at the 2000 Olympics (Paul Palmer) has not made an individual event or even a relay(!) for the coming Games. He has gone backwards in performance (1:48.1 at last year's Trials, 3 seconds slower this year!) at what for most people was surely a shave and taper meet. Other people who I think did not PB included Karen Pickering, Jo Fargus, Jamie Salter, Mark Foster, Heidi Earp, Jaimie King, Nicola Jackson (not made team), Rebecca Cooke, James Hickman and Steve Parry (sorry if I am wrong about any of them?). James Goddard swam a great 200 back but was a long way adrift of last year's times in his two best events (both IMs) when surely it was not unreasonable to expect him to have been able to move further on from those times he did at the 2001 Euro Juniors?
Kate Haywood did very well on the 100 breast but the meet did not play host to many juniors breaking through into the higher end of the senior ranks and raising our hopes for the short to medium term international future of British swimming. Compare times for such swimmers to last year's meet and not many have made the kind of progress one might have expected.
Scottish (and Scottish based) swimmers had a very good showing at the meet winning several events (mens 200, 400, 1500 free, 100, 200 back, 200 brs; womens 100 breast, 50 free) with several other medal winning performances. Certainly, Scotland seems to have moved on more than England based on the results of this meet. However, again, despite these good Scottish swims, a significant number were not PB's and the PB's that did occur were mostly by very small amounts. Anglo turned Scot Todd Cooper was one who did make a big improvement in performance and as he is still in his teens he could be a great international prospect for Scotland and Britain in the years to come. Wales are obviously struggling to produce international level swimmers at the present time.
I did hear from one fellow coach that the NPD was not best pleased with the results and expressed his displeasure to a number of the coaches at the weekend although I cannot confirm whether this is true or not. Perhaps someone who was there could tell us more?
To summarise: we obviously have a small number very classy swimmers who look like they can do a job for us on the big stage. However, many of our well known and established senior international swimmers do not appear to be progressing (with many going backwards) and there seems to be very few top class juniors coming through to replace them.
I now look forward to hearing some views from the rest of you who read this forum?