Olympic team defended

In an outspoken post-Olympic analysis on the plight of Irish swimming, Swim Ireland's director, David McCullagh, has said that Irish competitors in Sydney could not have made finals.

McCullagh feels that it is an opportune time to consider how Irish swimmers can perform at Olympic level, and claimed "the reality in Ireland at the moment is that they cannot".

A media that is relatively quiet for 44 months of the cycle, claimed McCullagh, "announce that the swimmers again failed to move to the finals. They didn't fail, they could not have made the finals in the first place."

McCullagh went on: "This is not negative, it is factual. For example, Andrew Bree did his best 200 metres breaststroke of 2.18.44 in July. He would have had to improve by an unprecedented 2.27 per cent in two months to have made a semi-final as, the lowest semi-final qualifier swam a 2.15.36. Swimmers at this level usually improve by one per cent or less per season."

Essentially, suspension of funding is central to all of this: "As a consequence, preparation did not seriously start for our swimmers until September 1999. It takes two to three years to prepare," McCullagh added.

"Attention," said McCullagh, "needs to be paid to circumstances and to the athletes' efforts to reach the world stage, and not just criticising them when they do not perform there.

"The reality is, our swimmers lack the facilities, resources, finance and back-up that swimmers in many other countries have."

Meanwhile, Ger Doyle is poised to be re-appointed as national coach, and with national squad training to start later this month the appointment could be approved within a couple of weeks.

The lamentable issue of funding surfaces again and could result in top swimmers having to opt for the British short course championships in Sheffield (December 7th-10th) instead of the more prestigious European short course championships in Valencia (December 14th-17th).