Swimming: Hard taskmaster gets results

By DAVID LEGGAT

Swimming spectators have their own distinctive habit at big meetings.

Just as Asian cricket crowds clap in unison as a centurymaker heads back to the pavilion, and America's baseball crowds really do stand, yawn and stretch at the seventh-inning stretch, so swimming spectators have the wave.

It's their way of urging the swimmer on. In another setting it could be a "come over here" gesture.

Throughout the New Zealand open championships at Henderson last week, one woman was prominent among the wavers, and it's possible to mount an argument that "come over here" is indeed the way to go for the country's most promising swimmers.

Up and down the side of the pool in front of the large, vocal North Shore contingent, Jan Cameron, pen and paper in hand, was doing her level best to encourage her finest towards Olympic Games times. You could put a case that she was the most influential person at the championships - and she'd be the first to scoff at it.

By the time it was all over, five of the six individual qualifiers came from the club based at the Millennium Institute, which is perched on top of a hill just off the Northern Motorway.

Cause for celebration? Pleased as Punch? You bet, but there was also a strong measure of disappointment for those who came close.

North Shore is the dominant club in New Zealand swimming. The bulk of the best train at the institute, and at the heart of the operation is a woman whose word is law within its walls.

Cameron has been at the club 13 years since shifting across the Tasman. It has not always been easy but the former Olympic silver medallist is nothing if not determined.

"When I started we had no money and 90 swimmers. We've built a progressive pathway, put in good systems. I've gathered round me good support people and we've started to go forward.

"Now we have 400 swimmers, we've been the top club for the last seven or eight years and we're continuing to provide an environment which says, 'Strive to be the best you can be'."

And she's as proud as hell about it.

There are two parts to this story: the coach and the club.

The popular perception of Cameron is a feisty, awkward, cross-me-at-your-peril sports coach. Anyone watching her at the championships would have seen a coach with her heart on her sleeve, a hug here, a consoling arm round the waist there. She loves her swimmers - her words - and loves what she does. There is an element of Mother Hen about her.

Describe her as a hard taskmaster and she'll happily accept that - "it means nobody will come here thinking anything else", she quipped.

There have been a few well-aimed barbs across Swimming NZ's bows, invariably at anything which cuts across what she believes is best for the swimmers.

"[Olympic backstroker] Hannah McLean once described me as tough on the outside, soft in the middle.

"People's best-founded criticism of me is that I jump in with both feet. But I will always fight for the rights of swimmers to get a fair deal.

"That will always be paramount for me. I'm prepared to fight whatever it takes to get that.

"I don't think of myself as feisty. I only get stroppy if I feel people are not pulling in a positive manner for swimming.

"I'm not politically motivated but I am motivated and I think I owe the swimmers that."

Born in Sydney, Cameron was part of the Australian 4x100m freestyle team which won silver at the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. She was up on the dais alongside the legendary Dawn Fraser.

There were two silvers and a bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1966.

Great memories, but it's not Cameron's style to thrust that information at you. That was then, and it all adds to the wealth of wisdom and gives her important credibility. A case of been there, done that. Then ...

"I was training to be a physical education and health teacher at university in Wollongong and I got a call from the Port Kembla Leagues Club chief executive.

"He said, 'We have been told by Don Talbot that you'd make a really good coach. We've got 20-odd kids and we'd like a coach for them'.

"Being a poor student I said, 'Aw yeah'. He said, 'We'll pay you $1000'."

Enough said. She later married Talbot, one of Australia's best coaches, and that was the start of a career which took her to coaching spots around the globe before she settled in Auckland. She's now married to Sky Television's head of sport, Kevin Cameron.

There are two schools of thought on what's happening in New Zealand swimming.

It's either good that there is a centre providing high-quality facilities and training and, if it's attracting the cream of the country's swimmers, fine.

Or it's having a detrimental effect as talent is sucked north, leaving standards to suffer in the regions.

Cameron has often heard the argument and isn't particularly interested. She suspects there's a bit of the tall poppy syndrome at work.

New Zealand has long been a nation which values the safe and solid in sports people. Succeed by striving for excellence through being different and watch out for the knife.

But in any case, the rest of New Zealand falls outside her swimming orbit, which is the North Shore club. End of story.

"I believe in the Australian model, which is onwards and upwards.

"What if I said to you, 'Do you think the All Blacks should not be gathered in one or two teams but dotted around the country, or the Super 12 should be 15 teams?' Those sorts of arguments are in every sport.

"To me it's a matter of climb on board and go. That's what it's about, isn't it?"

She pointed out that the rest of the country is actually the responsibility of Swimming NZ's high-performance director, Clive Rushton. It's not that she's unsympathetic; it's just not part of her patch.

So what is happening at North Shore? Is it something in the water, or are they growing fins on their swimmers?

The club operates like this: the top group comprises 30 swimmers, who must have qualified as national championship finalists, aged between 16-25; the next 25, from about 14 to 16 years, form the youth programme; then there are other layers beneath that of about 25 swimmers. There are 12 coaching staff.

There is only one boss, but Cameron is quick to praise the work of her coaches. She's no Lone Ranger and insists she is part of a high-class team, singling out the club's head coach, former German Olympic swimmer Thomas Ansorg, for special praise.

"We work very strongly as a team. I'm a coach and very passionate about it. I believe my strength is I'm willing to - in fact I relish - working with really good people."

As Cameron outlines the layers within the club, it becomes clear she has a very clear idea of the development from youngster splashing about to Olympian. And she's passionate about it.

It begins with skills development, education on what it means to be a good swimmer, involving parents and making sure the coaching is of a high calibre.

As the children become teenagers, it involves learning what Cameron calls "the skills of training".

"That means commitment, getting people to buy into your commitment and you buying into theirs. The preparation is in the developmental stage, then the training stage begins."

That includes regular evaluation, what Cameron calls "layering of appropriate competition so swimmers become neither complacent nor defeated, rather that they strive and have some successes and some disappointments and learn to handle both, continually upping the ante".

Cameron talks of "tension in the line" - that is, those below constantly pushing those above - as a key to the club's ideals.

When they reach the top group, the relationship between swimmer and coach becomes critical, what Cameron calls "a collaborative partnership. The relationship of coach and swimmer becomes very important and it takes time to grow so they get the best out of each other. It's a two-way thing".

It's pretty simple stuff. Systematic yes, but simple.

Within that top group there are different goals. For some it is Athens, for others the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in two years, or the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Cameron insists it's no rod-of-iron approach and believes it's daft to try to treat all swimmers the same.

"Everybody's different. Each person goes through a different time in their life when they're able to be self-reliant and other times when they need a shove.

"One would hope anyone looking at international success would be totally responsible for their own self and how they approach their programme.

"If you take [Olympic individual medley swimmer] Dean Kent, he just needs polishing. Another swimmer might need a little bit more than that."


What makes a good coach?

"You have to be well rounded, you can't be mono, you have to be diverse in your approach and always try to think of another way to get that swimmer back on track."

Cameron admits there have been occasions when she's had to break bad news to a swimmer. Maybe their attitude is wrong; maybe they're just not good enough.

"It's very tough and I've learned over many experiences not to do that too often because you just never know.

"Some have greater tenacity and last out the distance, and they're not the brilliant ones. So I've learned to be patient and not to underestimate."

It is instructive to hear Cameron on her bid to qualify for the Mexico Olympics of 1968.

"I was at teachers' college 50 miles away and had to commute at weekends. I'd train Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, Sunday morning race back to university, then go back next weekend.

"One day I sat down with my dad and he said, 'What are you doing?'

"I said I was going to try for Mexico and he said, 'It's time to get a job. You're 21, you've had a great life in swimming. It's time to move on to a career'. These days you could do both; in those days it was nigh impossible.

"He was right. He was a 100 per cent person. I just missed out on Mexico, but really my commitment was not 100 per cent."

Cameron doesn't admit as much, but you wonder if it might have had a lasting impact.

Ask her for a motto, a word to sum herself up, and there's a long pause.

"Committed, and to me that means 100 per cent committed. I've always believed you either do it 100 per cent or not at all. That's what I live by."

Her swimmers wouldn't have her any other way.

JAN CAMERON

* 4 x 100m freestyle silver medallist 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

* Two silvers and a bronze at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

* North Shore swimming coach for 13 years since moving from Australia.

* Described as a tough taskmaster.

* Loves what she does and gives her all to her swimmers.

JAN'S ATHENS MOB

* Hannah McLean: 100m backstroke, 200m backstroke.

* Helen Norfolk: 400m individual medley, 200m freestyle.

* Cameron Gibson: 100m backstroke, 200m backstroke.

* Corney Swanepoel: 100m butterfly.

* Dean Kent: 200m individual medley.