CHRIS SPICE: How we turned British Swimming into a winning machine at Tokyo 2020… from creating a culture of self belief to identifying talents like double gold medallist Tom Dean
- Chris Spice is the successful British Swimming’s national performance director
- Team GB had their most successful Olympics in the pool with eight medals
- It is a stark turnaround since London 2012, when they only managed three
- Spice sheds light on how the Team GB setup has turned its fortunes around
One of the reasons I took the job of national performance director in 2013 was that I could see we could swim fast but we couldn’t swim fast when it matters. So there was a whole programme around how to swim fast in the arena and not be nervous.
At London 2012, only 20 per cent of our team swam a season’s best. I thought that was something we could fix. We brought in people from outside of swimming, who gave a different perspective across sports science and leadership.
We have been able to build a culture of belief and self-confidence. You can’t give someone self-confidence but you can create an environment where they build it. We have had seven years of that.
Team GB’s swimmers have been transformed into medal machines after a glorious Tokyo 2020
Duncan Scott led the British athletes with four medals as GB grabbed a record eight in the pool
The talent ID has also gone off the charts. We have got so much better at knowing exactly who is going to make it.
If I take Tom Dean as an example. He had two sisters in the United States on scholarships and we thought he was going to go over there as well. But we fought like crazy to make sure that didn’t happen because we didn’t want him to become a short-course swimmer.
We got Adam Peaty to talk to him and say, ‘You need to stay in Britain.’ That was four or five years ago now. We only have five or six good ones a year and we have got to make sure when we get them, they get in the right place, with the right coach and the right programme.
We moved from five national centres down to two and got them both running. Then, with our home nations partners, we invested in Stirling and Swansea to add to the two we have in Bath and Loughborough.
Tom Dean was on the brink of a move to America before being convinced to stay in the UK
The Brits have upped their game significantly after their disappointment at the home Olympics
My challenge to everyone was to make it so good that the athletes will come. We have gone from having less than 30 per cent in those centres to almost 80.
Some of our strength and conditioning, data analysis and bio mechanics are off the charts. There is stuff that we are doing that the rest of the world is not.
We have a programme that is ‘high challenge, high support’. One of the first things I did was chop the team in half because we needed to focus the resources on the people that can get there.
But our athletes are a pleasure to be around and it has been a phenomenal performance. It is nice to be talking about the colours of the medals rather than the numbers.
Advertisement