July 2, 2008
Swimmers' uphill task
Singapore team are in Sydney to bid for Beijing
qualification with 'novice' coach
By
Jeanette Wang
IT IS
perhaps the biggest meet of their careers.
This
week's swim competition in Sydney will be the last chance for
Marcus Cheah and Nicholas Tan to qualify for August's Beijing
Games.
But
the swim for these Olympic hopefuls will be an upstream one, as
they will have to produce their best times without their regular
coach.
For
Jack Simon, 70, who coached them, served his last day as head coach
of The Grassroots Aquatic Club on Monday.
In a
seemingly desperate move, the Singapore Swimming Association (SSA)
appointed 21-year-old national swimmer Leonard Tan to replace Simon
late last week.
Simon
has 46 years' coaching experience, including 25 with the United
States national team.
Tan,
who has less than three months' coaching experience as Simon's
assistant, will oversee the team at the Telstra Grand Prix 2 event
from July 4-6.
Said
Nicholas, 18, who is just 0.08 second off the men's 100m butterfly
Olympic B qualifying mark (54.71s): 'I'm not as comfortable as I
would be if I had an experienced coach going with
me.'
Nicholas and Tan were teammates at last year's
South-east Asia Games.
Nicholas' mother Eunice said: 'The kids have
trained so hard. Nicholas is so close to qualifying. It will be a
shame if he doesn't make it because his regular coach is not with
him.'
Yesterday morning, led by Tan, the Simon-coached
trio of Cheah, Nicholas and Quah Ting Wen, 15, and Russell Ong, 18,
left for Sydney.
'Imagine the intensity the boys are going to
feel,' said Ting Wen's mother Anne, whose daughter is the only one
among the four who has qualified for the
Olympics.
Jeffrey Leow, the SSA's president, believes that
Tan is the best person to be with the swimmers on the
trip.
'He
has had the most direct access and familiarity with Marcus,
Nicholas and Ting Wen,' said Leow.
'Other
than Jack, Leonard knows their past two months of workouts
best.'
Temporary help, though, will be available in
Sydney in the form of renowned Australian coaches Michael Bohl and
Ken Wood.
The
SSA, with help from the Singapore Sports Council, has arranged for
Bohl, who coaches 200m individual medley world record-holder
Stephanie Rice, to help Tan out at the
meet.
John
Dempsey, the former head coach of the now-defunct SSA Centre of
Excellence (COE), has persuaded his friend Wood to assist the
swimmers at the meet, after Cheah, Ting Wen and Nicholas, in
desperation, called Dempsey for help.
'Leonard is a lovely man and one of my former
swimmers, but he's a novice coach,' said Dempsey over the phone
from Hong Kong, where he is now a club
coach.
'I
have a long history with the trio and feel obligated to help them
out. Ken Wood has graciously agreed to assist them as much as he
can.'
Wood
will be in Sydney with his Brisbane club swimmers, including 200m
butterfly world record-holder Jessicah Schipper and Australian 10km
and 1,500m champion Melissa Gorman.
Dempsey has briefed Wood on the trio's
performances and training and racing
routines.
Simon's departure marks the second time in three
months that the trio have been left in the
lurch.
Dempsey left in March, just before the
four-year-old COE at Toa Payoh closed.
Some
observers felt the Australian had been asked to leave as he was not
part of the SSA's plans.
Dempsey felt it was unfortunate that the trio's
preparations have been less than perfect.
'But
I'm confident they'll do the best they can,' he
said.
[email protected]
I see an incompetent administrator failing badly in his
implementation in revamping the organisation structure. Losing 2
expensive and experienced coaches in a short span of time while the
swimmers are preparing for their Olympics year is the best example
showing how a weak administrator should be. Decentralization
training for a small pool of talented swimmers in a small country,
would seem illogical to a layman. To set several decentralised
training swim centres, an extravagant financial consultant would
need to raise the operating expenses to engage a team of
experienced coaches. But, he could only afford 1 expensive coach so
far. Sometimes, a practical and experienced administrator is what
the association needs, not people with impractical dreams.
