Serious competition starts now for British swimmers chasing Olympic qualification

Swim to Stratford: Team GB's swimmers like Gemma Spofforth have work to do in the next few months (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)

With the Shanghai World Championships firmly consigned to history, now is when it gets serious for swimmers contemplating a spot at the London Olympics.

Eleven months may remain before the world's best congregate in Stratford, but in the pools and gyms of Britain the hard work has already started for those harbouring ambitions of joining them.

Most of Britain’s swimmers have been enjoying some downtime after their exertions in the Far East, taking advantage of the one part of the year when they are not expected to be training.

For most this has meant three weeks out of the pool and the opportunity to take a holiday to recharge the batteries for the journey ahead, knowing this could be the most important training cycle of their careers.

That journey takes Britain’s swimmers to the Aquatic Centre in March 2012 for the British Championships and their one chance of securing Olympic selection.

The meet is an all or nothing race for qualification, so getting it wrong in March will prematurely end Olympic ambitions. Some events are sufficiently competitive that just qualifying could prove as challenging as competing in the Games themselves.

With that thought in mind, the hard work has already started and in many places has begun out of the pool. Much was made of the introduction of ballet to the Loughborough University squad’s training regime earlier this year, but since their return to training they have also been trying out badminton in combination with their swimming.

In a similar vein, Glasgow’s swim team have taken up judo and Bath’s group spinning, all in order to explore any avenue to improve pool performance.

The cross-training approach has its own hazards. One hundred metre backstroke world record holder Gemma Spofforth recently headed out on a 15-mile cycle ride as part of her efforts to get in shape only to find herself face down on a concrete pavement and in need of a trip to A&E.

Fortunately the damage was limited to a broken nose, a broken toe, and cuts and bruises, so Spofforth expects to back in the water imminently, but the fragility of the athletes’ lot was brought into sharp focus.

Expect to see swimmers being wrapped in cotton wool the closer that trials get and again before the Games.

Some have also been trying out new training bases to kick start their Olympic campaigns. Notable amongst these is Beijing open water bronze medallist Cassie Patten, who has moved across the Pennines from Stockport Metro to train with the City of Sheffield squad.

As a result of the world title won by her team-mate Kerrie-Anne Payne in Shanghai and the strict selection criteria laid down by governing body FINA, Patten is now no longer eligible to compete in the 10km open water event in London.

Instead, she is widely expected to turn her attention to the 800m freestyle in the pool, an event she also contested in Beijing.

At trials, that means she will cross swords with World and Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington and rising star Jazz Carlin who were Britain’s representatives in Shanghai.

Selection is therefore far from assured. Just as the great Ian Thorpe found himself disqualified from the Australian selection trials of 2004, leaving places open for others, anything can happen on the day.

It really is a case of having a lane and having a chance and Carlin in particular will not be taking Patten’s challenge lightly.

British Swimming has also joined in the search for any possible advantage, installing a state of the art traveling overhead camera into the pool at Loughborough that allows a swimmer’s stroke to be monitored directly from above so flaws can be identified and corrected.

Not to be outdone, Australian Swimming has installed an altitude training simulator into their training facility in Sydney to allow swimmers, including world champion James Magnussen, to reap the benefits of training at altitude without having to fly around the world to do so.

Whatever approach is taken, and whatever technological assistance is provided, the next few months will be pivotal.

This will be the one opportunity for Britain’s current crop of swimmers to experience a home Olympics and no-one will want to miss out through a lack of dedication or preparation.

The swim to Stratford really has begun.

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London 2012 Olympics: British swimmers and divers too ready to accept failure

6th in the World for the 100m Backstroke! BOOM!

Tweet by Liam Tancock after his sixth-place finish in the 100m backstroke final at the World Swimming Championships in Shanghai. Tancock placed equal fourth in the same event at the 2009 championships in Rome.

Well done to everyone who raced tonight, some amazing results! Pleased for our relay, great job by all the girlies!

Tweet by Caitlin McClatchey after she and her GB team-mates finished sixth in the 4×200m freestyle final at the World Championships, three places lower than in 2009.

I’m actually quite happy with that. It’s my best time in a textile suit

Comment by Fran Halsall after finishing fourth in the 50m freestyle final at the World Championships.

I am happy with fifth place

Comment by Tom Daley, the 2009 world platform diving champion, after dropping down to fifth in the final in Shanghai.

——

Now I’m no sports psychologist, but something very strange is going on in the minds of some of Britain’s leading swimmers and divers.

The above quotations are just a representative sample of an attitude I encountered time and time again during the recent World Aquatic Championships in Shanghai.

The willingness of some athletes to accept and even celebrate what were patently disappointing results was a shocking development and is something that needs to be snuffed out quickly if they are to fulfil their potential at the London Olympics.

Whatever happened to the mantra of Bill Sweetenham, the tough-talking Australian coach who began the revival of British Swimming more than a decade ago?

“Winning is the only option,” he used to say, and even had the phrase emblazoned on a giant banner at one end of the Loughborough pool. Now, it would seem, just making the final is an acceptable alternative.

I can only imagine what David Brailsford, the performance director of British Cycling, would make of such a toleration of failure.

The success of Britain’s most successful Olympic sport at the 2008 Beijing Games was based on Brailsford’s ruthless pursuit of medals, to the extent that riders who failed to show top-three potential were simply dropped from the elite programme.

Simply making the top six or top eight was not acceptable.

Charles van Commenee, head coach of UK Athletics, is another who would turn the air blue at the thought of his athletes being happy with fourth, fifth or sixth place.

He once called Kelly Sotherton a wimp for winning an Olympic bronze medal because he thought she should have won silver.

Britain suffered a whole series of near-misses in the pool in Shanghai and were only salvaged by a late medal flurry on the final weekend from Rebecca Adlington, Hannah Miley and Liam Tancock, the latter, alas, winning in a non-Olympic event.

Those near-misses, as British Swimming performance director Michael Scott conceded, will have to be converted into medals in 2012, but achieving that will require a different collective mindset to the one I observed in China.

I am reminded of Ed Coode, the former British rower who finished fourth in the coxless pairs final with Greg Searle at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“Happy” is not a word Coode used to described his feelings at his result, and for the next four years he proceeded to torture himself by replaying a video of the race to remind himself of the disappointment and spur him on the next time he had an Olympic opportunity.

At the 2004 Athens 2004, he rowed in the coxless four that won gold for Britain by eight hundredths of a second.

For Coode, winning really was the only option.

Ryan Lochte beats Michael Phelps again, sets world record

Ryan Lochte keeps proving that nothing is impossible. The U.S. swimmer has not only beaten superstar teammate Michael Phelps in consecutive races, he also has proved that world records can be broken even without high-tech bodysuits.

Lochte edged Phelps to win the 200-meter individual medley at the world championships in Shanghai, China, on Thursday with a time of 1 minute, 54.00 seconds, beating his old world record of 1:54.10 from two years ago when polyurethane suits still were allowed.

It's the first world record in a 50-meter Olympic-sized pool since the suits were banned last year.

"I wanted to do something that everyone thought was impossible," Lochte said. "Since they banned those suits, everyone thought a world record would never get touched again. I just wanted to show everyone that can happen. That's why we have records -- they're meant to get broken.