Dolphins And The Speed Of Things To Come
2008-04-15
Craig Lord
In an interview with SwimNews, Alan Thompson, head coach to Australia, talks of preparations for Beijing, speedy trials, outstanding performances and how the picture will be blurred until the USA has confirmed intentions at trials just ahead of the Battle

In an interview with SwimNews, Alan Thompson, head coach to Australia, talks of preparations for Beijing, speedy trials, outstanding performances and how the picture will be blurred until the USA has confirmed intentions at trials just ahead of the Battle of Beijing

The Dolphins will gather at the Aus$17 million Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Recovery and Swimming Centre in Canberra in the wake of trials and Manchester 2008 to discover the delights of a pool packed with gadgetry designed to propel them into the future.

'It's the first time we've utilised the new facility as a team,' head coach Alan Thompson told SwimNews. 'We're there for a week and we'll have a grand prix on the end of it, in morning finals format. We'll have another one of those in early July. In between, we're calling it individual preparation, where some people chose to stay home and some choose to get out of the cold and get up to North Queensland for a camp. We're got a group going to the US to swim at Santa Clara and [a meet] in Vancouver, we've got a group going to Omaha grand prix and groups going to Europe [Mare Nostrum tour and Seven Hills meet], half in Rome, half in Monaco, then we'll all come together for Barcelona and a couple will stay on to race in Canet.'

All Dolphins will be home in Australia by mid-June to get ready for a last grand prix back at Canberra before the Olympic team leaves for a week-long holding camp in Kuala Lumpur on the way to the Battle of Beijing.

The 10-lane, 50m pool complex in Canberra has a uniform three-metre depth and high-quality filtration system designed for fast swimming and the filming and monitoring of it. And when the work is done, there's this little lot to look forward to: hydrotherapy and recovery facilities include spa baths, jets, plunge pools, a cold water walk through tank and a river in which swimmers do flexibility and stretching exercises. The pool itself comes complete with high-tech performance analysis devices and biomechanical systems, instrumented start blocks and turn walls, timing gates, filming trolleys and strategically-placed cameras. Every reaction is timed, the angles at which a hand enters the water and the efficiency with which the swimmer grabs the water for leverage and propulsion, and much more, are monitored more finely than ever before. The science of streamlining and the distance travelled off walls is becoming a fine art.

In Canberra, markings along the side and bottom of the pool indicate key swimming distances, while a magnetic timing system raised from the pool bed measures split times at specific distances from the end wall which make up key components of a race. At the click of a mouse, coaches and sports scientists can instantly tap into a vast wealth of data and video footage including force, velocity and stroke characteristics of a swimmer. 3D magnetic computerised modelling systems replicate a swimmer's precise performance in skeletal frame models. The information is then relayed to a generation of swimmers that is more aware of what they are doing in water and how best to exploit the element than at any time in history.

Bungy cords and pacemaker lights (a system that the positive side of East Germany used to use) are also part of the picture, while instrumented start blocks measure the force, acceleration, angle and timing of swimmers at the dive, and special touch pads provide data on force, acceleration, push off angle and timing of the swimmer's turns and backstroke starts.

Technology. The theme of the sport right now. The suit is much this season but not all, and the combination of technology on a variety of fronts is sending signals to the swimming world that limits live in a remote place for this sport in the early years of the 21st Century. All of which brings its challenges. Progress in the past has been tainted by doping and the ever-present cheating of cheats dictates that all extraordinary performance comes under scrutiny. It's what history and the ceaseless pursuit by the minority of the next illegal formula for success has left us with. And the LZR Racer from Speedo has left us with hundreds (probably thousands by now) of best times some 2% ahead of where they had been before the age of compression and high-tech fabric took on new meaning in February.

'During that whole period of our trials and during Eindhoven at the European Championships, I saw the discussion about other issues that overtook the performances of some of athletes,' said Thompson. He accepts it as a fact of life in modern sport. He can do nothing beyond his own shores. He believes that within them, he is running a clean ship. The rigours of the testing regime, the long history of excellence and absence of a doping culture are there to support Thompson and his school of swimmers and coaches. The suit's benefits are undeniable.

And then there's the work and attitude of coaches and swimmers, which Thompson is happier to focus on. It's heading skywards across the board Down Under but two swimmers stood out above all others at trials, in part because they had never won on a world stage before but emerged from the Sydney selection as world record holders with times on the board that took the breath away: Stephanie Rice and Eamon Sullivan.

'I was in Brisbane couple of weeks ago,' said Thompson. 'She [Rice] was sick and she wasn't in the water. She wasn't happy about that she was skipping and doing dry land exercises 'cos she's had a cold. I liked her attitude. She wanted to be in the water. She's always been a good trainer and a good racer. She's lost a bit of weight and put it all together this year. She's done a great job.' So has Michael Bohl, who placed Rice and himself on the team as a medal hope 16 years after his last presence in a tracksuit bearing the five rings. Back in 1992, his charge was Glen Housman, a man who should have gone down in history as the slayer of Vladimir Salnikov's 1,500m world record. The electronic timing failed and he was denied official recognition as bearer of the global standard. At Manchester 2008, Bohl had a another sub-15-min-man in the water, albeit short-course, as Nick Sprenger continued on the path back to potential after a period of poor health.

In Beijing, Bohl will have Rice just in time for a season of plenty. At the trials, she cracked the world marks in the 200m and 400m medley, in 2:08.92 and 4:31.46. Put her in her old bodysuit and I reckon you have something more like 2:10 and 4:35. No matter: in Beijing it'll be back to square one in a line up of suits that claim the same advantages as advertised by their makers. Bohl had done 'a great job', said Thompson and would be looking to make his mark 16 years after his last official Olympic outing.

For Rice and Sullivan, it will be first-time round, while the sprinter's coach in Perth, Grant Stoelwinder faces a Games at which he has the favourite for at least one of the two sprint events on his hands. Stoelwinder is quoted as saying that Sullivan's 21.28 world record, a time that sent shockwaves around the world of swimming, was a 'perfect swim'. But not in the sense of 'can't be improved on'.

Thompson said: 'They [Stoelwinder and Sullivan] have tried for years to find a training regime that doesn't tear him down ... they've got a better handle on that.' It showed at trials - and how. What was it like to be there? 'There are types of world records where you see a world record you expect to be broken or one that's just beaten by a close call. But this [Sullivan's 21.28] was very similar to Leisel [Jones] going 2:20 [200m breaststroke]. You just sit there and you're in awe of the performance. You can't talk, you can't say anything. You've just seen something you never saw before. That was what it was like with Eamon. It was great,' said Thompson.

Perfect swim? ' ... especially in the 50, you have to get it all right if you want to get the time. You muck up one tiny aspect of your start, transfer into stroke, a breath in the wrong place, the touch. Anything at all, and you're looking at anything up to half a second, which is in the final or out of the final in many cases. I'd be reticent to say it was a perfect swim because I know how Grant and Eamon scan the video every time and look at minute details after every race, the stroke rate, every aspect of it. They scour it every time and look for the thing that can be improved. That's why Eamon has been able to move it on. Beyond that, I don't know anyone apart from [Stefan] Nystrand and [Alain] Bernard, who races as much as Eamon. The key to those three blokes is just how much they have raced over the past few years.'

There is no denying the extraordinary nature of Sullivan's sizzling sprint swims at trials. Nor is there any denying what went before. Like this sequence of practice since 2004:


2004: 2 efforts under 23sec
2005: 3 efforts between 22.59 to 22.86
2006: 15 swims between 22.00 and 22.94
2007: 13 swims between 22.05 and 22.54
2008: 22.17; 22.05; 21.56; 21.41; 21.28, the last four of those in the LZR.

'That's the key that I've seen,' said Thompson. 'Look at Nystrand's short-course swimming. There was just lots and lots and lots of times when he got up and performed really well. He raced all the time on the world cup series and in the end he mucked something up in Moscow and then he nailed it [world record] in Berlin. That's the benefit of those meets - race practice after practice after practice. Whereas a 1,500 swimmer would break down with that a 50 or 100m swimmer can thrive off that.'

Bernard and the European Championships in general had come along just in time to remind Australians what they were up against elsewhere, said Thompson. 'I think that the European Championships came and challenged our guys to perform and our guys responded very well to that challenge. We had some great results that we were very pleased with but more than that I was pleased with the fact that our swimmers saw it [trials] as just one piece of the preparation for the Olympic Games. Now a lot of the younger ones came to Manchester and Piney [Adam Pine] has come here and they've all performed very well again.'

They dealt well with a new-look format, taking in their stride a gladiatorial super-trooper-lit entrance on to the pool deck for finals that highlighted another changing aspect of sport. Fastest qualifiers were announced last and had very little time to strip of and collect themselves before the double whistle blew to mount their blocks. 'On the first night, they rushed through it a bit too much,' said Thompson. 'But we're in a new era, where coaches and officials can talk about these things. That's great. We spoke to them about it and they slowed it down. They came to me to ask what I thought of it ... and what came out of that was that they planned not to blow the double whistle until lane 4 was undressed.'

The absence in Manchester of many of the Dolphins who are Beijing bound came down to choice in a difficult season in the midst of a cluttered calendar that culminated in the biggest moment of a swimmer's career. After trials, some had a short break while others resumed training straight away. 'Their plans are for the whole Olympic preparation not just the one meet,' said Thompson.

The dynamic of Pine, 32 and Emily Seebohm, 15, on the same team brings new challenges. 'It's an interesting dynamic, something that I've found new in our sport since I've taken over [as head coach], there's been an increasing number of married athletes, athletes living in permanent relationships, athletes with children ... the spread of ages is 15 to 32, a team with younger girls and older men ... its an unusual dynamic,' says Thompson. 'It's something we're really feeling our way on and hopefully addressing it well. But its a different dynamic that a lot of teams of the past have not had to deal with. When I first started on the team in 1990 we had mainly young guys. I read an interview recently with Lisa Forrest about the 1980 boycott and she was the team captain at 16. Its a whole different dynamic we're working with now. Its an interesting and good one and its something we better get used to as athletes get that bit older and stay in the sport longer.'

Thompson will spend the coming weeks and months listening for signals from other trials around the world before assessing where the Dolphins fit in the great scheme of a sport that is forever on the move in ever larger numbers of countries. 'As trials go on around the world - we have New Zealand, Canadian, the GB trials, the Japan triald this week, and so on, and then we have great racing at meets in Europe and the US trials. Only when they conclude will we get a really true picture of where world swimming sits. Until the Americans race at trials you've got a distorted picture.'

A few months out from Beijing and his first time out on the burning deck as head coach at the Olympics, how was Thompson feeling? 'Good. It's an interesting one for me. I've attended four Olympics now. I was a home coach in 1996, on the outside looking in. In 2000 I was the team manager, so that was a different role to play. In Athens I was a team coach with my own swimmers there and this time its as head coach. Hopefully I've picked up on the things I've learned, the things I want to do again, the things I don't ever want to do again. Hopefully our preparation will benefit from the experience I've had.'

The long hours, the thrills and spills, highs and lows, were all part of the coaches lot, said Thompson. 'In the end, you don't do it just for money, for prestige ... you do it 'cos you love it. I miss coaching, I miss having my own kids. I've got another role to play this time and hopefully I can do it well. I look forward to it. I think coaches on the whole are challenged by these things and I think that the reality is that the swimming competition, even though its an Olympics, is no harder than any other - but its all the emotional things at the Olympics that make it very different. Just walking into a village dining hall and seeing some of the greatest athletes in the world in a whole range of sports remind you that this is no ordinary meet. At a world championships you go home (back to hotel) and you have dinner in your own room but there [Olympics] its not like that. Its about managing a whole range of distractions.'