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Editorial
Swimming vs reality television: it’s time to get real (14 August)
(Opinion) Australia has held the world record for women’s 4x100m freestyle relay for the past two years. That is until two weeks ago, when the Germans blew that record out of the water by taking 0.72 seconds off the time set at the 2004 Olympics. The swimming world has been clamouring about Australia’s loss of dominance ever since, as strong young teams from around the world get set to claim the recently vacated number one position. Never mind about Thorpie, it's the girls we should be worried about.
The European Championships gave the Australian swim team a nasty shock, with two Australian world records obliterated in quick succession by the German team. Described as a “sprint machine”, Germany’s Britta Steffan smashed Libby Lenton’s 100m freestyle record only days after the German relay team wiped out Australia’s relay world record. It was a double blow to Lenton, who was also part of the former world record-holding Australian relay team along with Jodie Henry, Alice Mills and Petria Thomas.
With the FINA World Championships in Melbourne and the Beijing Olympics looming, the Australian Institute of Sport head coach Shannon Rollason sees this new development as a positive, commenting “I see it as a good thing. I think Australians are good at being the underdogs.” Lenton agrees, saying “I think this will definitely give us the edge that we need to come back and come back fighting.” But as Australian Swimming head coach Alan Thompson ominously told the Herald Sun newspaper, “There is no doubt our girls aren’t as dominant as they were 12 months ago and showdown is looming in Melbourne.”
So clearly the general consensus among those in the know is that our team needs a kick in the pants. After the Commonwealth Games, where the women’s team dominated in a pool filled with British colonial nations, a false sense of confidence was created; in our glowing pride over our sixteen women’s swimming medals, two world swimming records and overall supremacy throughout the local Games, we forgot about the rest of the world outside the Commonwealth. Specifically strong swimming nations the US, Germany and China, who look to be fighting back against the Australian ascendancy at the World Championships in Montreal last year, where our girls won ten out of twenty gold medals in the pool.
So what is the Australian women’s swimming team doing to counteract this triple threat? Longer, harder sessions in the pool? Pumping iron in the gym? More protein? None of the above, actually. Try ice skating and singing lessons.
That’s right, two of our most prolific female swimmers have decided to diversify their interests. I’m not sure their pursuits could be classified as cross training; captain of the national swimming team Giaan Rooney took up ice dancing for Channel Nine’s new celebrity-reality venture Torvill and Dean: Dancing on Ice, and former Olympic swimming champion Sarah Ryan teamed up with Australian Idol Guy Sebastian for a series of duets in Channel Seven’s It Takes Two. Okay, you got me there – they have both retired from competitive swimming. But still - how embarrassing.
While Sarah and Giaan have both retired from competition, they represent a trend in women’s swimming that was previously the domain of ageing AFL players and cricketers. Seeking a position in the media spotlight on retirement assures financial security and safety from obscurity following an illustrious medal-collecting career; but this should not be the focus of a swimmer’s attention before retirement. Training hard, setting records, winning races and attaining glory are the things that should be the centre of attention for our champion swimmers, instead of acting like erstwhile Big Brother contestants, desperate for that last glimmer of fame before they fade into anonymity.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that our female swimmers can once again be the best in the world; they just need to focus on the task at hand. The Australian Institute of Sport swimming programme has recently opened a new $14 million state-of-the-art training and testing facility for scholarship athletes, and Shannon Rollason was recently recruited as head coach, having been credited as the instigator of the Australian female swimming revolution. Surely with this kind of support, along with the incentive of the World Championships in Melbourne in 2007 is enough to put our girls back on top? Focus more on the pool and less on second-rate reality television, and we can once again have the best female swimming team in the world.
By Anne Treasure
Links
AIS -- www.ais.org.au/facilities/swim.asp
Melbourne 2007 -- www.melbourne2007.com.au/
Ausswim -- www.ausswim.telstra.com.au/
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