After the BBC Panorama documentary about abusive swim coaches hits the screen this evening, I have to concur, some coaches are assholes.

I’ve met a few of them in my life, and yes it’s true, some coaches need to be in jobs that only includes garbage collection and not interacting with youngsters.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4gmm2zv8no

If that link doesn’t work the full wording is: BBC Panorama; The Dark Side Of Swimming Clubs.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002ch2f

It is a sad thing when ‘the ends’ always justify the ‘the means’. So many coaches have used the success of a few of their swimmers to justify their bullying and abuse. It makes me think of Stanley Kubrick’s movie Full Metal Jacket. The character Gomer Pyle can’t do all the things the Drill Sargent asks so he is mercilessly bullied. Nobody remembers the kids who don’t make it, they are simply fodder. Left with their depression, in a ‘world of shit’. A world of shit with a hint of chlorine.

Shaming kids on their weight to keep them slim is almost as bad as starving someone, but if it’s possible, even worse. If mental strategies are used to shame someone to not eat and the end result is mental illness, it is abuse. Abuse that is carried into post-swimming life. Mental health struggles can drag on for long periods, so often it causes depression. That then, very often, leads to suicidal thoughts, in some cases suicide. So yes, coach, you are an asshole.

I’ve heard a coach say to me that bulimia is a good way to keep swimmers thin. I left that program in disgust.

I’ve heard of coaches who kept their swimmer in deep water and not allow them to stop…for hours. But the end result was an Olympic gold…but the coach is still an asshole.

I’ve heard of coaches locking the doors to the pool to not allow entry if a swimmer was late. And subsequently changing that tact because of a car accident whilst a swimmer was trying to not be late.

I’ve heard of coaches training swimmers so hard they can not recover and become chronically fatigued. So fatigued that they did not recover for years. In one case… decades. This was reported in Swimming World magazine and celebrated! A chronically fatigued swimmer, who couldn’t cross her living room, finally got herself back to health and swam in a masters meet. A success story. Like beating someone to the verge of death and sending flowers to them in the hospital when they’d recovered.

So … the long arm of the law will be coming to get these abusive coaches. Their time is nigh. Unless you move to a country that isn’t worried about such things, then you can probably keep doing what you’ve been doing.