Swimming SA (SSA) really does need to get its national championships right.
The experiment to merge the senior and junior galas into one event can only be described as a failure, as schedules played havoc with swimmers and coaches.
And that was when they actually stuck to the original timetables.
The first night was a mess. The electronic board showing swimmers’ times didn’t work for the first two races and they ran late, meaning that swimmers were warming up too early and then had to guess when they might compete to warm up enough.
Chad le Clos described to the media how visiting English swimmer Max Litchfield, fifth in the 400m individual medley at the Tokyo Olympics, couldn’t understand that swimmers had no idea when they’d be competing.
Litchfield, who had been training with Le Clos in the Western Cape, literally couldn’t comprehend this concept. This type of chaos is foreign to British swimming.
Welcome to SA, Max.
There was also a whisper that one official, in one of the distance races, was too early ringing the bell signifying to the swimmers they were embarking on the final 100m of their event.
At the 2016 Olympic trials in Durban the schedule also went awol on the opening night, infuriating Cameron van der Burgh. The issue for him then and for Le Clos this week was not the personal inconvenience, but rather that less experienced swimmers with borderline dreams of qualifying were potentially compromised.
But even when the schedules did run like clockwork this past week, the gala didn’t work. It was a long and tiresome programme and some coaches were stuck to the pool deck for as many as 16 hours.
The heats ran from the early morning well into the afternoon, with only a short break before the finals started at 6pm.
And to top it all the water temperature wasn’t at the 25ºC minimum stipulated for top international competition, hovering some three degrees too low. Warmer water assists in faster times.
Some opted to warm up outside the Newton Park complex, dashing back to the pool to race. At least one swimmer qualified that way.
The country’s administrators expect their athletes to compete against the world’s best, but they can perform any old buffoonery they like.
One poor swimmer, thinking he was about to be summoned to a medal ceremony, missed his final. Perhaps that was his fault, but the point is the early confusion in the gala left him ripe for that mistake.
There was also a whisper that one official, in one of the distance races, was too early ringing the bell signifying to the swimmers they were embarking on the final 100m of their event. Fortunately the lead swimmer was aware of the error and continued swimming, but still.
The senior swimmers here were ultimately targeting the World Championships in Budapest from June 18 to 25, and they were working on the assumption that the same qualifying times were in place for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham from July 28 to August 8.
I’m not sure why there is confusion for the Games this time because at least for the past two editions, at Gold Coast 2018 and Glasgow 2014, the qualifying standard used by SA has been top five in the Commonwealth rankings.
The Commonwealth Games Federation doesn’t issue qualifying standards, but rather gives national teams stipulated numbers to fill. SA has 92 slots for individual sports, but nobody knows how many each code will get.
That is not SSA’s fault, and they should be fighting for more.
At the championships in Gqeberha nine swimmers achieved qualifying times for the World Championships, and presumably for Commonwealth Games, but SSA and the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) should really start looking ahead to Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 and up that number.
When it comes to SA swimming, every single Olympic gold medallist throughout history, starting with Joan Harrison in 1952, took part at the preceding Commonwealth Games.
It’s time administrators try helping the swimmers; that would make a nice change.
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