SWIMMING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Ahead of the Irish team's participation in the World Championships in Rome, JOHNNY WATTERSONspeaks to their new high performance director about the prospects for the sport
SWIMMING BELIEVES it is turning a corner, that it is a sport exploring what it can be rather than what it was. July 10th threw up some evidence of green shoots and even the sceptical began to warm to the concept of believing again. In one sweep Gráinne Murphy, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Wexford, cut a swathe through the Junior European Championships with three gold medals and two European junior records. There was little fuss, no controversy.
Murphy had moved from her home near New Ross and relocated herself in Limerick, where she could go to school and live beside the university’s 50-metre pool. She wanted more from the sport, to move from a small club to one where she had the environment to train 20 hours a week in the pool. Her mother lives with her during the week. As ever, in swimming, personal and family commitment is the starting point.
Murphy’s success coincides with the arrival of the new high performance director in Irish swimming, Peter Banks. Banks was once the skinny, fair-haired kid who could be seen most days in the Newpark School Sports Complex in the 1970s. It was Banks who chalked up sessions on the board and watched the splashing chains of bodies tumble turn every 25 metres, who smelt of chlorine and hosed down the pool deck.
He too wanted more from the sport but could see how the landscape lay in Ireland. He emigrated to the US. Twenty years on and Banks was the US women’s coach for the 2000 short course World Championships and assistant women’s coach to the Sydney Olympic team. It was Banks that guided 25 swimmers to berths in the US nationals, qualified five for the Olympic trials and helped Brooke Bennett win Olympic gold in Atlanta and Sydney, where she also set an Olympic record in the 800-metre freestyle. Another of his swimmers, Maritza Correia, was a world champion silver medallist.
The year Bennett won gold in Sydney, Banks was voted Coach of the Year in the US. Now he’s back in Ireland, back to a sport that has been ripped apart by scandal and controversy, back to a relative backwater from a lucrative pedestal in Florida. Why?
“It was difficult to leave in one sense but the opportunity to come back to Ireland was very important to me,” he says. “I know this is going to sound corny to people, but I felt it was the right time to give something back to swimming and my country.
“There were a lot of issues in the past. I hope it’s moved on. A lot has been resolved and I believe the kids deserve the best coaches and the best opportunities. They weren’t involved in anything and deserve more. I’m here to move forward and that’s what I say to people.”
In truth there are no other reasons for him to be in Ireland. Is there big money in Irish swimming? Is there endless untapped talent here? Is the sport a high profile? Does the Government care? Will he be feted if the swimmers do well? Sometimes corny makes sense.
Banks comes from a savage swimming industry in the US, where it is intensely cut throat. His voice is one of encouragement and also one of steel. He has adopted the American way of being fiercely goal-oriented where winning shouts loudest. In that sense Murphy was a triumph. Banks expects from his swimmers but they are not the only ones he will put under pressure. He has also made explicit demands of himself.
“2012 – my goal is to have six athletes at the Olympic Games, to have one in a semi-final and one in the top eight,” he says. “I believe that’s a possibility. I believe that more than six is a possibility for 2012. But the idea is also to look at 2016 and 2020, to develop a continuous pathway for swimmers.”
In Beijing, Ireland had three swimmers, who qualified automatically with “A” standard times. Since the Olympic Council of Ireland (IOC) cracked down on the threat of gigantism, there are no more “gift” entries. Three athletes is the most Ireland have ever had. Six at the London Games seems challenging.
“I think it is critical to achieve that. If I haven’t got that achieved I have not done my job. I think it’s very attainable.”
WE HAVE been here before. Big talk from the new broom sweeping in. But no one has ever arrived with Banks’ credentials. He is like Giovanni Trapattoni breezing into the Ireland soccer job. He doesn’t need the money or the position and he’s been to places no one currently in swimming has ever been. Like Trap, his position of strength and strong sense of direction is liberating. The challenge and the notion of winning appeals to him.
“Take three swimmers, Aisling Cooney, Melanie Nocher, Andrew Bree. And now Gráinne. That’s four on the pathway,” he says. “I believe we’re right where we want to be. I look at these swimmers in the water and ask why they are not swimming faster.
“It’s not that things are not right. It is okay . . . well, no it’s not okay. You must look for the best every single time. You must aim for the top and you cannot accept anything else. I ask them – unless you are Michael Phelps – when you line up on the blocks with seven other swimmers, what will separate you?
“I bring the belief that it can be done. Having worked in the US for so many years, I know the kids are no different here. But I don’t have unlimited athletes. The US system is survival of the fittest. You go to the trials and the top two go to the Olympics. You get very goal-oriented because you must step up to the plate.
“We have to be more prepared, organised and structured. We have to be more demanding and we have to be more accountable to produce results.”
Although low profile, Murphy’s times at the recent Junior European Championships have excited Banks and her full-time coach in Limerick, Belgian Ronald Claes. The teenager swam 2:14.15 in the 200m individual medley for a new junior European record. Michelle Smith’s swim in the same event at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, where she won the gold medal, was 2:13.93. Smith’s gold medal effort in the 400m individual medley, where she again won the gold medal, was 4:39.19. Murphy’s gold medal time in Prague was 4:40.88. She has already broken Smith’s Irish 800m freestyle record.
“Gráinne is now ranked 23 in the world in the 400 individual medley,” says Banks. “Not in junior rankings. In the world. Take that one step further and take out the swimmers from the US, for example, who can’t swim in the World Championships because only two qualify, and she’s in the top 20 in the world.
“Brook [Bennett] wasn’t the most talented athlete swimming with me in the US. There were more talented swimmers. It was her commitment, her sacrifice. She never missed a session. She gave up all the teenage things and she was fiercely competitive. I see those things in Gráinne.”
THE SWIMMERS and coaches are answerable to Banks. He will pore over their work loads, their short- and long-term goals, their fitness, how far they swim, what sort of sessions they do. He will look for chinks and also ways to improve them. His job is to look at them in the water and solve the problem of how to make them swim faster. Behind the rhetoric Banks’ job is to be specific about what they are doing and why they are doing it.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think we could do it,” he says.
These past days the 13 on the elite Ireland squad have been training in an outdoor pool in northern Italy as the World Championships in Rome are also being held outdoors.
Banks has been here a matter of months and already the swimmers believe they can attain better results. If he achieves his first goal regarding 2012 he will have smashed all previous marks for Irish swimmers in the Olympics, except the 1996 games staring Michelle Smith.
From Banks tough talk is normal talk, not bravado. If Ireland’s swimmers fail, he fails too. The interesting part is he has tagged his own reputation to the success or failure of the team. There is a nice symmetry about that, one with which he is comfortable. Importantly, it toughens the resolve to be something more than aspirational.
“Consistency is not three months but three years,” he says. “All of this is vital so that we can keep alive that belief system. If I can’t stick to a goal then I’m not worth much.” It’s that believing thing again. Maybe we underestimate its strength.
The European Championship began last weekend with synchronised and diving events, with the focus shifting to swimming from tomorrow, Sunday. The Ireland team are in action from the opening day.
