Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
I really don't understand all the anger over the swim results. Did you or anyone else really have different expectations? I thought they had an outside shot at one medal, most likely Hayden. But it seems like people have an expectation that the Canadians should have earned a fistful of medals at this point, which is completely unrealistic. Maybe the fault is on the media who, in their typical Canadian optimism, made it sound like all of our athletes are world-beaters.
After the debacle at the Athens Olympics, Swim Canada pretty much rebuilt from the ground up. High-level coaches were fired, athletes retired, and there was a real lack of young swimmers being developed, so the entire developmental system had to be restocked. It's not that the Canadian coaches don't care about medals, it's that medals at Beijing were simply unlikely; they've been fairly clear that they're trying to rebuild the program for London in 2012, and they've set firm medal expectations for that year. Results this year are vastly improved over Athens (not in terms of Canadian records and personal bests (which are meaningless in the context of the new swimsuits and fast pool), but in terms of where Canada ranks overall as a swimming nation when looking at a compilation of all individual results). I'm not happy about the results, but they're honestly pretty much exactly what I expected (if not slightly better).
|
^x2 People who are disappointed with the performance of our swim team are probably simply not aware of how far back they've had to come in such a short amount of time. In Athens only 3 swimmers made finals, and we've far eclipsed that this time around. It's coming, for sure. But to entirely gut and rebuild an entire sporting program on a national level from the ground up does not happen overnight. It IS moving in the right direction and the results are there if you can see the big picture.