Swim body plans to hold inquiry

AUSTRALIAN Swimming president David Urquhart didn’t mince words when describing the Australian team’s performance in London. ‘‘We got smacked,’’ he said. Urquhart returns home tomorrow to start setting the terms of reference for a major inquiry into Australia’s worst Olympic medal haul in the pool for 20 years.

A possible recommendation will be following the lead of the US and moving Australia’s team trials closer to the start of Olympic competition.

The Australian trials for London were held in March, while US trials were held four months later, just weeks before the Olympics started.

USA won 16 gold medals in the pool, to Australia’s one in the women’s 100m relay, and it was the first time since 1976 the swimmers had failed to win individual gold.

Media commentators, including radio’s Alan Jones and former Olympic swimmer Nicole Livingstone, have questioned whether the long gap between the trials and the Olympics allowed the Australians to ‘‘go off the boil’’ and service sponsors, while the Americans were in camp from the end of one competition until the start of the other.

Jones said the Australians had to peak, or ‘‘taper’’, twice – once for the trials and again for the Games. Livingstone said they had lost focus after the trials, ‘‘skipping workouts to film endorsements, attend photo shoots or simply rest on the title of Olympian’’. Statistics would appear to support that, with more than half the Aussies in London failing to beat their trial times.

Urquhart described as ‘‘a worry’’.

‘‘The trials were one of the best we’ve had for 10 years. To go from that to what happened here is not the way it was planned,’’ he said.

‘‘We expected our athletes to finish a hell of a lot higher after the way they swam at the trials.’’

The inquiry will be headed by former Australian coach Bill Sweetenham and two-time Olympic gold medallist Susie O’Neill.

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