Hard lesson learned

Attending foreign training camps just before serious competition is not the best policy, a message that came home to roost with dire consequences at the weekend.

Swim Ireland's high performance committee, reshuffled since the recent a.g.m., will be criticised as a result of expectations falling short at the Vienna long-course international meet.

A nine-day long-course training stint in Narbonne, France in the immediate run-up to the Vienna competition did not produce results and, according to national coach Ger Doyle, must now be regarded as a waste of money. Doyle's assertion comes at a time when Swim Ireland is urgently seeking a meeting with the Olympic Council of Ireland to discuss funding. More than a week of training in a 50-metre pool is not something that Irish swimmers can always count on, and the most was made of the opportunity in Narbonne. To then ask the swimmers to perform to their best potential, with European and Olympic standards uppermost in their minds, was pushing it too far.

Doyle wonders how better the times would have been had the swimmers been rested after training. He claims that there should be a break of at least a week between such training camps and competition. Alternatively, swimmers could ease up over the last few days of camp training, although this would defeat the purpose of the costly camp system. The camp system can also create problems regarding the varied individual programmes set out by coaches for swimmers.

Doyle said: "We are getting this camp-competition thing wrong and we must look for and set out a better plan. At this stage of the Olympic year our swimmers should be on the brink of lifetime bests." The tight travel schedule and a change in eating habits is deemed to have caused the illness that hit the camp and at least one swimmer, Donal O'Neill, did not compete in Vienna. Others were obviously affected by an apparent virus and performances dipped.

Places in the B final were attained by the squad but the only real bright spot was provided by Lee Kelleher's time of two minutes 18 seconds for 200 metres and her lone A final appearance at 100 metres butterfly, in which she finished sixth of eight.

But like so many of her colleagues, Kelleher will be exam-tied over the next few weeks. Hugh O'Connor of New Ross finishes his examinations one day before he is due to compete at the Grand Prix in Sheffield (May 26th-28th), and Kelleher may sit part of her exams in Sheffield.