Swimming: Coach signs up at Millennium elite centre

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Jan Cameron has turned her back on her Australian homeland and turned down the job of New Zealand swim coach to sign up with Auckland's new sports institute.

Cameron, assistant coach to the Kiwi swimming team at the Sydney Olympics, is now head coach of the Millennium Institute of Sport and Health, a $32 million centre on the North Shore.

The institute has also acquired rugby medical men John Mayhew and David Abercrombie, who will run a 24-hour health centre once construction is finished on land behind Rangitoto College next October.

Cameron, an Olympic swimming silver medallist for Australia at the 1964 Games, was on the verge of returning to her home country.

She was becoming increasingly frustrated trying to keep promising teenagers at the elite end of the pool, and had been a contender for Australia's No 2 coaching job, heading the national youth squad.

Then she turned down the national coach's job in New Zealand, opting instead for the new role with the Millennium Institute, the dreamchild of track and field entrepreneur Graeme Avery.

"I feel there's a great opportunity for our athletes here, with high-performance specifically in mind," she said.

"You can't wait for a Danyon Loader to come along every eight or 12 years. You have to have a system that maximises the talent that you have; one that keeps them up there until they are 34."

Cameron has signed with the institute for four years. Her North Shore club, the country's top swim club, will move with her.

New Zealand's leading swimmers will be invited to apply for a place in the centre, which has live-in lodgings, and train in a 50m indoor pool.

"This won't be for everyone, just as it was in Australia when the Institute of Sport first started," Cameron said. "But the athletes must be striving for world levels."

The institute is not in competition with the new Academy of Sport high-performance centres set up by the Sports Foundation.

In fact, the foundation's programme will use the institute's facilities for athletes in the top half of the North Island.

Track and field, basketball, water polo, triathlon and weightlifting will use the centre as a training base. Yachting, including the Team New Zealand crew, will do off-water work in the gymnasium.

The All Blacks may even stay there, at Mayhew's encouragement.

"The problem with New Zealand sport at the moment is that it is a collection of individuals," Avery said. "Our coaches sweat because they don't know what to do next, there's no one to talk to, and the athletes are equally lonely.

"The Australians shone at the Olympics because they've all been working together for the last 20 years. That's what we want to do here," said Avery.

He talks proudly of having the country's first altitude simulation room and a high-tech biomechanics analysis system to help athletes refine their actions.

The medical services will range from nutrition to cardiac rehabilitation, run by Mayhew, medical adviser for the All Blacks, and Abercrombie, the Auckland Blues' physiotherapist.

Most of the institute's facilities will also be available to the public.

"It's unique to the world to have a high-performance centre like this also linked to the community."