USA Swimming blow's it again

Phelps turns and finishes well even when his goggles are full of water. Phenomenal attention to detail. How many swimmers have we seen enter the water with their hands apart? I have seen many including Americans. That kind of stuff will get you doing push-ups during practice!!!! Or other fun and evil exercises.....

I need to help clarify this subject. USA Swimming may be entrenched in its ways but it is not disorganized. Jessica Hardy problem... caused only by the lab, not any thing USA S could have known or done at the time. The lab has taken total responsibility for the delays. And just to be a grammar Nazi, there should not be an apostrophe in the word "blows" in the title. To the point, USA S has done a remarkable job of public relations beforehand and will reap rewards after the Olympics are over. Spending millions on an ad or campaign during the event that has a dubious or marginal possibility of return would just be wasteful. For all of the things USA Swimming is, it is not stupid. Michael, My criticism of USA-S (and USMS) is that in my opinion neither organization has the "killer" attitude that could propel the sports to much higher participation rates, generate higher sponsorship $$ and be more accessible to the general public than the every 4 year Olympic gig....hence my opinion that they are "coasting". USA-S & USMS are businesses whether they want to accept it or not and they should be modeling their operations like other successful businesses...they are in the competition of sport...it would be nice to see some competitiveness. With a once in a lifetime swimmer in the spotlight the attitude is that its "enough" PR/advertising just having the events on TV...in my experience in the business world there is never enough and opportunities like this rarely if ever present themselves so take every advantage of them. As for being disorganized, I rest my case in regard to the fax in the office JH situation (there are some many problems with how everything was handled its not worth the time to dwell on them but a jury sure will), scheduling trials so late, all the poor "details" the team is missing in races (Hoff's touch for example). The other thing I'd like to see is an organized "feeder" system that is better at identifying young prospects and developing them thru a system of USA-S training camps. I'd also like to see more effort put into tying together all of swimmings organizations (USS, USMS, NCAA) into a more unified strategy of keeping people in touch with and involved with the sport from birth. It still blows me away at how many high school kids leave the sport never knowing they can continue on in USMS...they simply fall thru the cracks in many cases and rediscover often in mid life....USA-S & NCAA needs to recognize that once these swimmers leave their organizations they become the parents that bring kids back into the sport...coordinate better and maybe we see more pools being built rather than closed, more colleges offering swimming programs than dropping them and masters clubs doubling and tripling their members.

I was watching CBC tonight and noticed Swimming Canada is running an ad. Yeah, I'm sure the ad rates are considerably cheaper in Canada, but still a data point.

It still blows me away at how many high school kids leave the sport never knowing they can continue on in USMS...they simply fall thru the cracks in many cases and rediscover often in mid life....USA-S & NCAA needs to recognize that once these swimmers leave their organizations they become the parents that bring kids back into the sport...coordinate better and maybe we see more pools being built rather than closed, more colleges offering swimming programs than dropping them and masters clubs doubling and tripling their members. And in my opinion, THIS is the biggest mistake that is being made by all the swimming foundations. Does each of them figure the other is doing something and/or is responsible for advertising thier existance outside of thier participants? There needs to be much better VISIBLE communication between all the swimming foundations, not just in the US but in the world. Sure, they might be talking but it must be back channel as there is no indication from a public perspective that there is. What is wrong with a combined 'Swimming is for life' campaign that every swimming foundation participates in? As Paul said, today's swimmers are tomorrow's swim parents.

I see some good ideas being posted here and there, but Paul, do you really blame Hoff's poor race finish on USA Swimming? Seriously? Yes & No The coaching staff should have spent those weeks between trials and the Games drilling in on the little things like this...just as we all should have been doing the last few weeks leading into Portland...how many swimmers have you seen drive to the finish and throw their head back to see times...actions like that can and do cost races...but do agree there is only so much a coach can do and when the swimmer steps to the blocks it falls on them 100%.

I'd like to throw a little blame at the USOC.Swimming is the big medal winner for the US but they don't give it any particular emphasis.According to the ASCA Magazine the college coaches tried to get the USOC to give some money to help keep Olympic sport teams as scholarship teams and the USOC(which has a huge budget surplus evidently) said no.

Phelps turns and finishes well even when his goggles are full of water. Phenomenal attention to detail. I don't have any replay so I'm not sure about this but just before take your marks in the 200 fly I thought they showed Phelps pull his goggles away from his eye and reseat them. Does anyone have a recording they can check? Purely curiousity.

I see some good ideas being posted here and there, but Paul, do you really blame Hoff's poor race finish on USA Swimming? Seriously?

Here is an interesting article: www.slate.com/.../ (I just love Slate) What I find interesting about the article is that it illustrates some of the challenges in presenting swimming to the general public.

Our swim team did some advertising by sponsoring the olympic coverage on our local NBC affiliate. Not a big spot, but it got our name and logo out there in the community.