Column: Avoidable Miscommunication at Heart of Dissension Between USA Swimming’s Current Stars and Legends
The World Championships in Singapore are over. The United States is atop the medal table, in terms of gold medals and total pieces of swimming hardware.
And the prevailing story is one of internecine sniping.
Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte have staged mock funerals online. Lilly King is taking swipes at the retired program legends she’s about to join. Bobby Finke and other team leaders are on the defensive. Barbs and recriminations are being passed around as readily as anti-diarrheal medications.
It’s a portrait of disharmony borne of USA Swimming’s disorder. And like much else in Singapore, it’s not what the swimmers comprising Team USA deserve.
The legacy of the United States’ performance in Singapore will eventually be one of perseverance. A wave of acute gastroenteritis swept through the team, leading to a half-dozen event withdrawals and more than that number of swimmers competing at much less than their best. The disease’s effects meant few best times and confound the effort to ascertain swimmers’ progress in the first summer of the Olympic quad. Especially for a men’s team that won just one gold and six individual medals at the Paris Olympics last summer with a pernicious propensity for missing finals or semifinals altogether, it’s hard to discern the signal from the noise in what was hoped to be something to build on.
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But as swimmers leave Singapore, we’re not talking about performance. Instead, it’s the reaction to the performance. Finke wasn’t talking about his bronze medal in the men’s 1500 free as much as hitting out at “stupid” criticism from outsiders, a shot at Phelps and Lochte for posting a headstone commemorating USA Swimming’s demise as a global powerhouse. King spent the last days of her professional swimming career antagonizing Phelps and Lochte on social media.
It’s more distraction. And from Thailand to Singapore, it was all entirely avoidable.
After consecutive downers of international meets, Phelps and Lochte are right to be miffed. They know how their presence, as legends of the sport, on international teams has elevated others to exceed expectations, seen how greatness can be contagious, seen how a whole can exceed the sum of its parts. And they have a right to be displeased if the house built on the foundation they laid has fallen into disrepair, especially when said house hasn’t had a CEO for the last year. While no one is expecting the next Phelps or Lochte to materialize in the U.S. ranks, they still have the right to opine that third, third and fourth in three men’s relays is unacceptable.
A defensive response from swimmers in Singapore is also understandable. They’ve fought through illness – little has been officially confirmed by USA Swimming about any individual’s status, save that most have been affected – to still assemble solid meet. That’s especially true for a women’s team that, until the final day, had medaled in every event. The U.S. finished atop the medal table in golds (nine) and total medals (29). But instead of talking about that, Finke was addressing something posted on the Internet two days earlier.
Part of the problem is misunderstanding the criticism. There’s a difference between the swimmers and the structures under which they work. When Rowdy Gaines called the performance “rudderless,” it wasn’t a shot at any individual’s performance. It was about the systems that select, train, prepare and hold swimmers accountable, not for eight days or six weeks but year-round. Gaines, whose career was impacted by the systematic situation that was the 1980 Olympic boycott, understands the difference between the two.
“I do think changes need to be made, there needs to be a complete reset,” he told the Associated Press. “But I don’t think the sky is falling. But there needs to be some great leadership. Whoever they hire as CEO needs to be the leader that is sorely needed.”
That lens applies to the post-Singapore tumult. It’s not about one or two tough swims. It’s not even about a general regression from performances at trials. It’s a much larger inability to hit expectations. You can be empathetic about what the U.S. went through and still find it unacceptable that they couldn’t find four bodies to cobble together a faster mixed medley relay than Poland.
When that reality burrows into an already inflamed situation – like, say, being in month 12 of a CEO search that has lasted so long as to be on a second interim – it will strike a nerve.
Given what transpired, there were a few possible paths through the last week. The first would’ve been to avoid illness. But in a flawed world, that’s not always a reality. Indeed, the U.S. was not the only country affected, though certainly was the most impacted. Another would be to tell the story of a team that overcame adversity by sticking together and supporting one other through tough times. USA Swimming has struggled to get that message out there: The same instinct to remain tight-lipped when things were bad undercuts the ability to tell full, three-dimensional stories when they improved. In all cases, the lack of transparency has left individual athletes to tell their sides of the stories. Into the vacuum, others cast their aspersions and assumptions.
It all could’ve been avoided at so many points. And American swimmers deserve that.
