Richard Boock: We're swimming in dangerous waters

Swimming: elite excellence or grass-roots ability?

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TELL ME what's wrong with this picture. The government keeps pouring hundreds of thousands into our elite swimming future, clucking over the deeds of the Moss Burmesters and the Melissa Ingrams, while at the same time about 80 school pools close every year, most of our kids swim like tombstones and the poorest ones are, by far, the most likely to drown. If there was ever a setting for a national scandal-in-the-making, this is one.

No wonder the folk at Water Safety New Zealand are starting to jump up and down. About this time each year we gnash our teeth and wail in horror as the media brings us the latest instalment of the summer's inevitable tragedy and grief. But soon enough, as the holiday season rolls past and the kids return to largely pool-free schools, there's the chance to focus once again on elite swimming and to leave the carnage behind. And what a massive relief that is.

Even if you're not a huge fan of the sport you have to admit, it must be much easier going to sleep at night dreaming about a New Zealand swimmer winning gold at next year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi, than dwelling on the death of the Auckland grandfather who drowned at Ninety Mile Beach while saving the lives of his grandchildren. Or the four-year-old who perished days earlier at Lake Waro, near Hikurangi. Not that the grieving families get a choice.

People like to argue that elite sporting success helps grow grass-roots participation, therefore competitive swimmers, coaches and programmes deserve priority funding. It's for the greater good, you understand. They can't have seen the recent Australian report that found no link between elite success and improved participation levels. Or that the reverse actually applied; that the greater the participation levels, the greater the chance of elite success.

WSNZ are becoming increasingly agitated over what they see as a matter of neglect. Grass-roots swimming needs more funding, schools need more assistance for their required aquatic programmes and, not least, for the maintenance and upgrading of their ageing pools. If it doesn't happen soon New Zealand will be guilty of raising successive generations of Kiwi kids who can't swim to save themselves. A catastrophe of our own making.

Already this summer the drowning rate has kept pace with the road toll. It will, of course, fall behind as the year wears on and hopefully taper off around the 100 mark. But WSNZ predicts it could soon blow out to 180 drownings annually if something isn't done. Already the writing is on the wall. The number of young people dying in the water is rising, even though the average total has remained constant. Logic insists recent policies are to blame.

Consider these key indicators in the wake of widespread school pool closures: less than 25% of 12-year-olds can swim 200m, the minimum survival standard set by WSNZ. About the same proportion of year six pupils are unable to swim 25 metres or tread water. Schools are being starved of funding, previously offered by the Ministry of Education. One said it was getting only enough financial assistance to pay for half the cost of the pool chemicals required annually.

It gets even worse. Only 20% of the country's schools offer meaningful learn-to-swim programmes; that is, curriculums that have targets equal to WSNZ's 200m "swim for life" standard. Translated? Four out of five schools are employing sub-standard programmes with questionable delivery and dubious outcomes. Most of our kids are under-skilled. Private lessons are available but, in recessionary times, fewer families can afford the outlay.

There's no excuse for not seeing this coming, either. The United Kingdom has been going through an almost identical experience over the past decade, with success in the Olympic pool and at the world championships contrasting with failures at community and school levels, and increased drowning rates. In 1993 about a quarter of all 11-18 year-olds swam weekly. Now it's down to 10%, and one in five kids don't learn to swim at all.

For years, the English also ignored the warning bells. Swimming pools were lost at the rate of 10% a year in some areas. School pools are tipped to decline from 3000 in the 1980s to a national total of 750. In London a guideline says there should be one swimming pool for every 30,000 people. Not long ago the rate was running at one per 100,000. The result? Those whose parents can afford private tuition survive the life-or-death moments. The others drown.

Not long ago, British Olympic gold medallist Duncan Goodhew attacked the crumbling foundations of British swimming, saying it was imperative for schools to have pools, and a disgrace that communities were being forced to fight to save them. He said it was all too easy to deprive an amenity of funding; to let it become dilapidated and unattractive and prompt declining attendances, and then use its lack of viability as an excuse for closure.

He could have been speaking for New Zealand today. Although many Kiwi schools have pools, the vast majority cannot afford to maintain them, much less the one-off costs needed for major upgrades after decades of patchwork and temporary repairs. It's high time the government realised that the penny-pinching will cost lives. That, though it's easy to write these amenities off, the true value of swimming will always be gauged in the coroner's court.

That is, not necessarily on the medals' podium. Better to keep the drowning rate down, even if it does mean less success at elite level, don't you think? Ah well, never mind. Wonder how our team will go in Delhi?

rboock@xtra.co.nz

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