Swimming Australia hires Bill Sweetenham to guide national coaches
Swimming Australia has taken an important step to improve the performance of its swimmers on the elite level by hiring the services of Bill Sweetenham.
Bill has been hired to administer Australian top coaches and ensure better performances of Australian swimmers at the upcoming 2011 World Championships and 2012 London Olympics.
Along with Sweetenham, Australia has also hired Doug Frost, who mentored Ian Thorpe in his early career. Frost will return to Australia after a spell in England and will provide his assistance to the influential squad of coaches to the age group swimmers.
Furthermore, Thorpe’s current mentor, Gennadi Touretski, will also support the Australian sprint coaches.
Sweetenham has been head coach to three different nations at five Olympic Games. He devised the superstar career of Tracey Wickham’s during the 1970s and 1980s and is known as the most excellent coach of the swimming world.
In addition, Touretski is renowned as one of the best sprint coaches. Under his guidance, stupendous swimmers such as, Michael Klim, and, Alexander Popov, ruled the podium at many world stages, while Popov remained the world’s fastest 50m and 100m freestyle
swimmer from 1991 to 1996.
Now, Touretski has been working to put the former Olympic champion, Ian Thorpe, back on track for the 2012 London Olympics.
''Under the agreement we have with Gennadi Touretski, we'll send Australian swimmers over to Europe to train under him when their coaches think the time is right for that and we'll get swimmers coming from there to train here'', Neil said.
Touretski is training Australian comeback king Thorpe in Switzerland, as Thorpe intends to qualify for the Australian team to compete at the London Olympics. Touretski is likely to guide the Australian sprint swimmers at the Gold Coast in May, 2011. Thorpe
will also attend that camp, as he announced that he will participate in the events of 100m and 200m freestyle.
Chief Executive of Swimming Australia, Kevin Neil, was extremely delighted after acquiring Sweetenham’s services and said, ''Bill will start in a few weeks and he'll be a mentor to our elite eight or 10 coaches. He will start on May 1 once he completes his
international commitments and it is very exciting for our sport”.
In addition, Sweetenham readily accepted the proposal to train Australian swimmers. In the beginning of 2011, he stressed that Swimming Australia needs to mend its coaching issues. According to an estimate, Australia lost 500 years of significant coaching
in the last 10 years.
In addition, Sweetenham, who is rendering his services to Spain, proclaimed that he would have preferred providing his services to Australia. Spain won eight medals including four gold medals, two silver medals, and, two bronze medals at the 2010 World Short
Course Championships in Dubai and defeated Australia.
The panel of elite coaches recruited by Swimming Australia will surely make a splash at the upcoming world events.
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