I ran across an article in the South African online Times Live entitled "Swimming faces mass exodus", and it got me to thinking. In the article former world record holder, Gehard Zandberg, describes a disconnect between the administration of Swimming South Africa (SSA) and the swimmers. Zandberg says that the success of South African swimmers has been despite the plans implemented by SSA. Furthermore, he states that “We don’t rely on the federation anymore and we are making our own plans to scrape funds together. I believe many of our local swimmers will go overseas in the next ten years.”
With the latest SCAQ Pro-swimmer blog entries, concerning the tech suits and loss of sponsorship dollars, will our swimmers be facing the same kind of choices. Is USA Swimming doing enough to support our swimmers...especially our National Team? I already feel like there is a disconnect between USA Swimming and the needs of our "developmental" senior swimmers. Could USA Swimming do more to support our to support our top end athletes financially?
Ultimately, we don't want our swimmers to feel like some of the swimmers in South Africa feel.
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