Monday 25 February 2013

Review of London 2012 swimming performance recommends coaching shake ... - Telegraph.co.uk

"The result was devastatingly disappointing in terms of medals," he said. "The blame should be directed to me first as head coach."

The review also recommended abandoning the current practice of holding the main senior trials in the winter and following the American model of holding them in the summer a few weeks before the championship.

Britain held its Olympic trials in March this year, 13 weeks before start of the Games, and a number of swimmers experienced a decline in performance levels during the intervening period.

Bob Bowman, the coach of the world's greatest Olympian, Michael Phelps, was a member of the review panel and has agreed to advise Britain's coaches on how to adjust their training programmes to prepare for a summer trials.

The review was chaired by Craig Hunter, a former British Swimming coach and chef de mission of Britain's Paralympic team in London. German open-water swimmer Thomas Lurz and Conor O'Shea, the Harlequins director of rugby, were also panel members.

David Sparkes, the chief executive of British Swimming, said the board had agreed to implement all of the reveiw's recommendations and a worldwide hunt had begun to find a new performance director and head coach.

The sport will learn in the next few weeks whether it will face a cut in Lottery funding in the wake of its Olympic failure, though Sparkes said he was confident UK Sport would keep faith with the new generation of talented swimmers now emerging.

He said: "Although UK Sport did give us a hard time over failing to meet our medal target, they do still, I believe, see us as a potential multi-medal sport.

"I'd be amazed if they don't continue to invest heavily in swimming, as they did with athletics when they went through difficult times. I still think we're an incredible bet for Rio."

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