Hill: The problem is that we are thinking too much about the little cocoons
JOHANNESBURG: National coach Graham Hill warns that South African swimming is in a state of stagnation and suggests the country needs to catch up to world standards or be left behind.
Hill recently extended his contract by five years and is ready to crack the whip to get the sport back into shape.
SA have been relying on the heroics of their two global superstars, Olympic gold medallists Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh, to produce the goods at championships.
The country only managed to qualify five swimmers in the pool for the previous Fina World Swimming Championships in Kazan without a single female earning selection.
Again carrying the swimming team, Le Clos won silver in the 100m butterfly and 200m freestyle, while Van der Burgh finished second in the 100m breaststroke, and Brad Tandy was the only other swimmer to make it into a final in the 50m free.
Speaking after addressing local coaches at TuksSport in Pretoria on what it required from a coach to produce worldclass athletes, Hill said: “The problem is that we are thinking too much about the little cocoons we are in and not looking at the bigger picture that is world swimming,” Hill said.
“I’ve always compared my athletes with the world’s (best), and if I had to compare with locals, I don’t think they will get anywhere. We have to look outside the cocoon we are living in and look at the world stage.
“If we help athletes and the coaches to understand that we need to look at world performances, we can make massive improvements.”
Hill said part of the problem was that many coaches showed little interest in graduating swimmers to senior level, which requires more time, money and dedication.
“We coach great, talented swimmers to the age of 15, then we don’t coach the 16, 17 and 18-year-olds to the next level,” he said. “We get stuck at the age-group level and are not pushing them further and higher than that.”
SA swimmers have a busy year ahead with the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, in July before the 2018 Commonwealth Games trials in December.