Colbourn upbeat about future

Alex Vella interviews national swimming coach Andy Colbourn after the participation of the Maltese swimmers at the recent World Swimming Championships

With the 13th World Swimming Championships over and the Maltese eight-strong swimming squad, made up of four males and four females, back in Malta on Monday after their very creditable performances in Rome, the protagonists were happy that what they set out to do was accomplished after months of hard preparation.

Coach Andy Colbourn, in particular, was a satisfied man as his pre-set target of getting his swimmers increase the tally of new national limits was achieved with something to spare.

He is confident that the work being put in should help the boys and girls reach higher levels and was upbeat about the future of the sport in our country given that there are the right conditions on a wide spectrum.

This comes out from an interview he gave me soon after the group arrived from Rome.

Eight national records in Rome. The boys and girls must have reached and surpassed the tally of 30 national marks you predicted for this season after the Rome event. Why were you so confident?

The tally of national records for this year now stands at 33 and this is not counting any short-course records that were broken at the FISEC Games. I was confident about breaking the 30-record barrier because the boys and girls have trained so well all year and have matured a lot in their mental approach to competition.

But it was not all guess-work and crossing fingers.

Having their own physiologist and nutritionist in Maria Mifsud Bonnici the swimmers stood to gain. She has helped me to focus the team's training, depending on the results of the lactate tests we do with them and she has also helped the swimmers to understand how lactate build-up affects their performance and how they can recover from training and racing as well as setting their nutrition plans and diets for maximum performance.

Can our swimmers improve on these performances in the near future and what should help them achieve higher targets?

Yes, of course, they can and will improve on this year's performances. The team is growing all the time both physically and mentally, we have great role models now in Neil Agius (team captain) and Andrea Agius, who are very much the two swimmers who have led the charge this year and changed the face of Maltese swimming, both in performance and attitude.

For us to make further progress, we obviously need good and steady funding and not the messy uncertainty we had to deal with for most of this year due to personal prejudices of certain individuals.

It would also really help us to have a bit more leeway with training and facilities at the national pool and not to constantly face ridiculous bureaucratic word play every time we need to change training times, etc.

Are high-level competitions as the world championships as distinct from the GSSE necessary for small nations such as Malta?

Yes, we need to take part in major FINA competitions not just for the experience but also to know what we are doing and how things work on these big stages in preparation for the day when Malta will have a swimmer who can progress to a semi-final or, you never know, maybe even a final in these competitions.

Apart from this, it is important that Malta lets FINA and the rest of the swimming world know that we are here. Also these competitions are controlled very much by the ASA and we are not reliant on any other national body to dictate to us what our swimmers should or should not be doing.

Let's face it, when it comes to swimming, for example, who knows better what a swimmer needs? A coach with over 20 years experience in swimming at all levels or a coach from a totally different sport?

What impact would the times registered in Rome have had in the Cyprus GSSE in June?

The results in Rome, even from the boys, speak for themselves.

How do you rate our swimmers' overall rankings in their various individual and relay events in Rome?

We did not go to Rome to compare ourselves with other countries. We went there to break national records.

That is all we went for. We know where we stand and we know that we are slowly closing the gap, and that's all that matters.

Was the tapering of the swimmers for the Rome championships to your complete satisfaction?

No, it could have been better.

For some it was messed up by exams, work and family but then until the day we have professional swimmers that will always happen.

Do you think the performances in Rome will be an incentive for further efforts by these swimmers and other promising ones?

I think the performances and records broken throughout the year have already been a big incentive to all Maltese swimmers this year because you have to remember the eight who went to Rome were the lucky ones as there was a hard-fought battle all year for those places and there were another four or five swimmers who only just missed a place in the team.

As long as the ASA Swimming Board can keep up the hard work to find incentives for the swimmers, such as going to the worlds, then the swimmers will keep working ten times harder and Maltese swimming will start closing the gap on the other European nations.

Our swimmers wore different swimsuits, including the latest controversial ones. How far did this help their performances?

Only one of our swimmers wore a controversial suit, the rest of the team wore Speedo LZR suits.

There is a lot of controversy on how much these suits help performance and unfortunately FINA is not handling the issue very well as I feel they are bending to pressure from certain factions in the swimming world. I would not like to comment on this too much as in the end, rightly or wrongly, FINA is our governing body and we have to follow its rules.

But people need to be careful what they believe about the suits, especially after the childish comments made by one of the world's top swimmers and his coach at the world championships just because he was beaten by a swimmer wearing one of the new suits.

When the swimsuit controversy is hopefully resolved by the end of this year and all the swimmers return to textile apparel and according to FINA specifications, do you think our boys and girls will stand to gain from what many regard to be a levelling down of the swimmers' abilities?

The changing of the suit rules will not affect our swimmers that much, thank God, except that swimming will become a much more affordable sport again.

Of course, it will help in that we will have easier access to the same suits as the top swimmers, but until we are closer to their standard it will not affect us.

What are your plans for the coming season?

The team will again start training on Sept. 7 when we will be going through an extensive technique phase in training coupled with a lot of gym work.

For the rest of the season we have the usual Berlin meet in December, the Easter International in Malta, the world short-course championships at the end of next year, and if we can find a sponsor, the Small Nations championships in Iceland.

Do you envisage another year as fruitful as the one just over?

I am always optimistic.

However, before I commit myself on how good the season will be I need to see how it starts. But I do not foresee any reason why the trend started this year will not continue.

Are there any other comments you would like to make?

I am obviously very happy.

However, what made this season even better was giving a reply to somebody who at the beginning of the year when the ASA were trying to get funds for our preparation for the GSSE, stated to our then president Robbie Ebejer, that swimming did not deserve any more funding as we had squandered the money we had been given the year before.

I think we gave this person an answer as our performances this year speak for themselves. People need to realise that around 50 per cent of the training done in a year shows its benefits the following year.

Myself and the team would like to thank Austin Sammut (ASA president) for coming to see us in Rome. It meant a lot to the swimmers to see the effort and interest that was being shown to them.

Also a big thank you needs to go to the Swimming Board and helpers who have sacrificed so much time to help us with time-trials and finding funding this year. Without Power Bar, who were the team's sponsors for the Worlds, we could never have taken such a big team to the championships.

Lastly, we thank the media who have given swimming such great coverage and have played such a part in helping to stimulate the positive attitude in the swimmers.