Political appointment still rankles Tanner
GOLD MEDDLE
Ex-Olympian believes her 1968 swim coach
was chosen only because he was from Alberta

BEVERLEY SMITH
Sports Reporter
Monday, August 7, 2000

Toronto -- Olympic swimmer Elaine Tanner gets this awful feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever she hears of the controversy surrounding the appointment of female coach Shauna Nolden to the Olympic team.

Tanner gets horrid flashbacks to 32 years ago, when she was favoured to win the gold medal in the 100-metre backstroke at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

The energetic swimmer they called Mighty Mouse lost the gold medal after a series of bad coaching miscues. She knows what it's like to have an Olympic coach who is a political appointee.

Tanner can't even remember the coach's name now. Her own coach was Howard Firby, a dedicated, inspired Vancouver man who Tanner says was one of the best technical coaches in the world. Firby wasn't even named to the Olympic team in any capacity.

To direct the women's team at the Olympics, the swimming association chose an Alberta man whom Tanner had never heard of. "He had no swimmers that had placed anywhere," she said. "He never did anything after the Olympics." She figured later that the association had been under pressure to appoint a coach from Alberta, which had never had a national team coach before.

"We were all in shock," Tanner said. "They never gave us a reason why they chose this coach. I should have kicked up a fuss or done something, but I was so obedient and naive and obliging, I went along with it." Tanner was 17 years old at the time.

The coach trooped the female swimmers to Banff to train at high altitude, in preparation for Mexico City. But the swimming association and its new women's coach forgot to arrange for the swimmers to train in a pool. Banff wasn't exactly known for its Olympic-sized pools.

The pool at the Banff Springs Hotel was not much bigger than a back-yard pool, and the hotel refused to inconvenience its guests for the swimmers. That left a tiny oval-shaped recreational pool at a tourist site.

When the young women, including Marion Lay, arrived for their first workout, they were astonished to see the easy program this unknown coach had outlined on a blackboard.

"Marion and I looked at this workout, and here we were, ready to go to the Olympic Games, and I'm ready to try and win a gold medal," Tanner said. "I hadn't had a workout like this since I was eight years old and on a B team. The guy didn't know how to approach senior swimmers. It was such an easy, ridiculous workout. He should have been a local, community coach."

She and Lay decided to train themselves. But the man's inexperience sapped their confidence. Tanner's parents were horrified when she told them. They almost pulled Tanner out of the training camp, to bring her back to Vancouver and train with Firby.

To add to the confusion, all of the team members got food poisoning in Banff. "We were all as sick as dogs," she said. "It wasn't a good start."

At the Olympics, Tanner got another surprise just before the start of her 100-metre race. The inexperienced Canadian coach pulled her aside and told her to start slowly, even though that had never been Tanner's style.

She didn't learn until recently, while watching the CBC's The Olympians series, that her appointed coach had stupidly imparted his strange strategy to her right in front of her archrival, Kaye Hall of the United States.

Hall won the gold medal.

The network interviewed Hall, who said she didn't believe her luck. "I knew what [Tanner] was going to do. I knew she was feeling really dubious about the whole race. I felt like a million dollars walking out there."

Tanner said the coach gave her silly advice, because she had the "endurance of a racehorse" and Hall was a weak finisher. "If I'd been ahead of her, there's no way she would ever have caught me," Tanner said.

"I was stupid enough to listen. I don't know what happened to me. I must have lost my wits. I should have known better. The whole thing to me was like a nightmare."

And when she heard of the Nolden controversy, Tanner thought: "Oh no, here we go again."

Tanner said the controversy is hurting the swimmers, who need to focus on what they do best, "not on the political, asinine, bureaucratic crap that goes on."

Although she would love to see a female coach do well on the international stage, she said she does not care if the coach is male or female. "I would want the best coach to do the job," she said. "I don't care if they come with purple hair."

Too often administrators forget that the athletes should come first. They forgot 32 years ago and they're still forgetting, Tanner said.

Some coaches are far too concerned with their own political manoeuvres, Tanner said. "A lot get involved in it because they want to build their own ivory tower. They want to build their own careers and they want to look good.

"Now, it's all politics. What can you do for me? How many swimmers can I get on the team because I get extra credits and money and bonuses?"

Firby was totally different, she said. He told her once that the measure of his success was to have done such a good job that the athlete really didn't need him any more.

He was happy to stand in the background and let Tanner shine.

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