IF THE Government is so keen on eliminating bullying, why is it throwing hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money at a coach who has spent the past 4½ years intimidating his staff and his athletes? The atmosphere created by Bill Sweetenham, the performance director of British Swimming, is so poisonous that 13 senior swimmers have quit the sport since last year’s Olympic Games in Athens, many as a direct consequence of his “bully -boy” tactics. At least one talented young athlete wants to change nationalities to distance himself.
The Australian, who was hired to raise standards after a disappointing performance at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, made it clear early in his tenure that he was willing to trample over his swimmers to assert his authority. At a team meeting during a holding camp in Hong Kong in 2001, he shocked the assembled athletes and coaches by tearing into Neil Willey, then 24, a former backstroke specialist, for leaning back in his chair. He advanced upon Willey with his finger jabbing. “If you don’t sit up, I will kick your a*** until your nose bleeds,” he is reported to have said.
Many were horrified at his behaviour but too stunned to react. Some of the younger swimmers would later identify this moment as when they became petrified of the man hired to help them.
“It was my first team meeting with Bill, so it was acutely embarrassing to be shouted at as if I was a child,” Willey said. “The whole team was there, including the coaches, but nobody had the guts to stand up to him.”
Later at the Hong Kong camp, Willey and Mark Foster, another leading swimmer, were called by Sweetenham to a meeting. The pair had blagged an upgrade to business class on the flight to Hong Kong at no expense to the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA), but Sweetenham forbade them to do it again. He told them that all team members must fly economy since this would generate team unity. The swimmers accepted the logic of the decision, but were appalled to find out subsequently that Sweetenham regularly flies business class at the expense of the ASA in a contravention of his own dictum.
David Sparkes, the ASA chief executive, confirmed the allegation. “We examine each flight on a case-by-case basis and it is true that Sweetenham sometimes flies business class for medical reasons (he has a serious leg injury from a motor accident) but never when he is on the same flight as the athletes,” he said.
However, another source within the ASA tells it differently. “Sweetenham almost always flies business class when he is in the advance party,” he said. “Furthermore, on the flight back from the World Championships in Montreal, he was happy to be upgraded with other members of staff despite the fact that swimmers were stuck at the back of the plane. The athletes were not amused.”
But back to the bullying. Adrian Turner was on the receiving end during a team meeting in Loughborough last September. “Shut it, sunshine, or there will be blood on the walls,” Sweetenham is alleged to have said as he advanced on Turner in such a way that some feared a physical confrontation.
Turner’s crime had been to question Sweetenham’s media ban at the Olympics. Chris Baillieu, the chairman of the ASA, was at the meeting, but did nothing to intervene. When Baillieu was approached by The Times to explain why he had not confronted Sweetenham, he refused to comment.
Jamie King, former British 100 and 200 metres breaststroke record-holder, is another who has suffered at the hands of the performance director. She was humiliated by Sweetenham at poolside in front of her team-mates and those from other countries at the 2003 World Championships in Barcelona.
“You are the worst swimmer I have ever worked with,” Sweetenham was reported to have said, part of a five-minute denunciation of someone who had to compete a few days later. “It was five minutes of embarrassment that left me in tears,” King said. “He is the biggest bully I have ever met and was the main reason that I retired.”
Sweetenham refused to comment on specific allegations when approached by The Times. He said that he was happy with the regime he had put in place and repudiated the notion that he was aggressive towards his swimmers.
Responding to allegations of bullying, Sparkes conceded that Sweetenham has an “uncompromising personality” but said that he is hugely popular with his staff and younger members of the team. This answer is seriously misleading.
Two leading young swimmers contacted by The Times spoke of their deep concern about the behaviour of the national performance director, although they were too fearful to do so on the record. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that swimmers were banned from talking to The Times after the ASA discovered that interviews were taking place.
Similarly, one of Sweetenham’s key members of staff condemned the Australian. “He treats his staff in the same way that he treats his swimmers,” he said. “We are all ordered around like children, whether we are in our teens or in our fifties. On one occasion when I stood up to him, he threatened me physically. I drafted a letter of resignation but subsequently decided that it was my duty to try to stand up to Bill on behalf of the swimmers.”
Sweetenham’s apologists suggest that his behaviour is justified if it produces results. They are wrong. If Britain swimmers won every gold medal at the next ten Olympics, this would not excuse his methods. Besides, it is dangerous nonsense to suggest that bullying is necessary to enhance performance. From my experience as an Olympic sportsman, great coaches are able to inspire their athletes without resorting to intimidation. It is about deploying what José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, calls “emotional intelligence”.
The reality is that Sweetenham’s behaviour is damaging the prospects of British swimming. Britain managed only two bronze medals in Athens, which is unsurprising when you consider that Duncan Richards, the psychologist tasked to help with team-building, spent most of his time at the holding camp mediating between Sweetenham and his increasingly distressed athletes. At last month’s World Championships, Britain won only three bronze medals, despite a mammoth performance budget; Sweetenham was given £6.1 million to spend in the four years to the Beijing Olympics.
Many of Sweetenham’s critics praised the Australian for creating a tougher training regime that improved performance in the early years of his tenure. But most spoke with sadness, rather than bitterness, that his belligerence is undermining an otherwise improved system. Sweetenham’s position should be reviewed as a matter of urgency. It is time to kick bullying out of swimming.
matthew.syed@mps-sports.com
IT’S MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
MARK FOSTER (six-times world short-course champion): “If I was a young swimmer, I would be looking to change nationality. The bullying dished out by Sweetenham is too much to bear.”
KAREN PICKERING (one of Britain’s most successful female swimmers): “I loved swimming, it was my passion. But life was so difficult under him (Sweetenham) that I could not take it any more.”
JAMES HICKMAN (five-times world short-course champion): “Bill made swimming for Great Britain incredibly stressful. I retired because I stopped enjoying being a part of the national team.”
THE FILE ON BILL
Born: Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, 1949.
Title: National performance director, British Swimming.
Based: Loughborough University.
Experience: Head coach, Australia; head coach and founder member, Australian Institute of Sport; head coach, Hong Kong; head of Australian Youth Programme; personal coach to more than 40 Olympic and World Championship medal-winners and world record-holders.
Britain's achievements since Sweetenham arrived in 2000: Best World Championship results - as many medals (18) won in 2001, 2003 and 2005 as Britain claimed at all eight previous championships put together, back to 1973; best Commonwealth Games result, Manchester 2002; three world, four European, 14 Commonwealth and more than 100 British records broken; more than twice the number of top- ten world rankings by British swimmers in the past four years as the national team enjoyed in the previous 20 years.
Sweetenham's regime: Team exercises under an all-for-one, one-for-all policy; living life outside the comfort zone (removal of TV sets from hotel rooms, for example); minimum of 60 kilometres in water each week for senior athletes; maximum three-week holiday each year, and that involving time in the water and no breaks at Christmas.
CRAIG LORD
