Bill Sweetenham

Bill Sweetenham is a competitive swimming coach.

Career

Sweetenham was the National Performance Director for British swimming from November 2000 to September 2007, having managed his native Australian swim team for 4 Olympic Games and 5 Commonwealth Games. He was a swimming coach at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) from the late 1980s till 1994. From 1995 to 2001 he was the National Youth Coach for Swimming Australia.

He has worked with more than 12 World Record holders as part of the national team in Australia, including Tracey Wickham, whose 400 m freestyle world championship record still stands to this day. He was voted Australian coach of the year three times and as performance director in Britain led the national team to 15 medals at the 2001 and 2003 world championships. In comparison, Britain had won 18 medals in total between 1973 and 2000, before Sweetenham arrived.

Sweetenham's tenure with Great Britain was marked by medal success at World Championship level, Olympic disappointment, and recurring controversy on his man-management methods.

Sweetenham has worked directly with more than 40 Olympians. He is also credited with the Australian youth programme of the 1990s which produced Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett among others, many of whom made it through to the Australian national team.

Prior to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Sweetenham's tenure as Director marked considerable progress in British swimming. Britain won as many medals at the 2001, 2003 and 2005 swimming World championships as it had at all previous world championships back to 1973.

End of tenure as GB National Performance Director

On 3rd September 2007 British Swimming announced that Bill Sweetenham had stood down as NPD citing personal reasons [cite press release |title=Sweetenham Stands Down as Swimming NPD |publisher=British Swimming |date=2007-09-03 |url=http://www.sportcentric.com/vsite/vcontent/content/news/0,10869,5157-183729-200947-43502-277743-news-item,00.html |accessdate=2007-09-16] . Sweetenham had previously indicated that he would not renew his contract, which was due for renewal following the Beijing Olympics in 2008. In December 2006 Sweetenham wrote to David Sparkes (Chief Executive of British Swimming) asking to be released from his contract either after the World Championships in March 2007 or at the conclusion of the summer meets in August 2007.

Michael Scott was appointed as "High Performance Consultant" [cite press release |title=British Swimming Appoints High Performance Consultant |publisher=British Swimming |date=2007-09-13 |url=http://www.sportcentric.com/vsite/vcontent/content/news/0,10869,5157-183729-200947-43502-277995-news-item,00.html |accessdate=2007-09-16] to lead British Swimming through to the Beijing Olympics; however, a permanent replacement as National Performance Director is yet to be found.

See also

* List of Swimmers
* Swimming

References