Dobbin gets his Swiss skates on
Palmerston North skating coach Roy Dobbin has been called out of retirement to take on the role of technical director for the Switzerland ice speed skating team.
Former New Zealand coach Dobbin had settled in for a golfplaying retirement, but the Swiss team wanted him on board to set up the country for future success in the sport.
Dobbin, 69, said after Switzerland had success at the last winter Olympics, the country had poured money into skating.
‘‘They asked if I would be able to come over and set up their systems from the ground up like what I did about 15 years ago in New Zealand prior to us winning quite a few medals at the world inline championships,’’ he said.
‘‘They want me to go over there and be a technical director and set up all of their coaching systems right from the ground up, not just at Olympic level.
‘‘They want this to be an ongoing thing. Obviously Switzerland is well known in snow sport, but not so much in ice sports, apart from bobsled. They want to complete the circle.’’
Dobbin’s son Kalon is the Switzerland national coach.
The job will be six months of the year and Dobbin wants to make sure the whole organisation is on the same page. He will also be doing analysis filming athletes, educating them about training and finding work for sport scientists.
How the steel of the skates interacts with the ice is one thing he would like to research. ‘‘You can be the biggest, strongest, fittest guy out there but you’re not going to win if you don’t have perfect technique.’’
When he first came into winter sport, Dobbin thought ice was just frozen water, but there’s more to it. ‘‘There’s hard ice, soft ice, slow ice, fast ice, the temperature in the stadium can change things. It was a sharp learning curve.’’
Dobbin said he preferred doing the technical side rather than coaching because there was not the stress of having so much riding on results.
It is a minimum four-year project, and the Swiss have set realistic targets. To start with, the Swiss want one athlete in the top seven at the world championships.