A must-read for us involved in Nordic swimming, this piece on Speed Endurance by Danish blogger, full-time swim coach and Eurosport commentator Ricky Clausen:
We invest a lot of money (in my country Denmark we spend around 1.200.000 euro centrally every year on the national training center and the national teams and the clubs spend much more combined on their elite programs) and we get nothing in return apart from the “joy of seeing the swims”. There are no resulting sponsorship deals, no increase in spectators for any meets, no rise in the number of members in the clubs, no rise in the quality of any other incentive in swimming and no other reward of any kind except for helping 16-20 individuals (the swimmers and their coaches) achieve their own personal goals. If they perform to a certain extent the national funding body (Team Denmark) will continue to contribute vast resources to (yes… you guessed it): to those 8-10 swimmers…
