Furniss reflects on British Swimming progression
The British Gas GBR Swimming Team returned home from a successful World Championships (25m) in Doha with eight medals to bring 2014 to a close a year of significant progress for the sport.
Impressive results at the Commonwealth Games, European Championships and the World Short Course Championships combine as a clear testament to the improvements made but Head Coach Bill Furniss is quick to add perspective to the honours gained.
“With the World Championships we need to keep it in context for the entire season,” said Furniss.
“Our focus for 2014 was Commonwealths and European Championships but we also wanted to swim well at the final event of the year. We picked a team off long-course performances so that we can keep this group of swimmers together. Our team behaviours and processes are improving all the time.
“We know we’ve got a lot of work to do, we targeted the final meet of the year to learn more about starts, turns, finishes and we’ve learned a lot from some of the athletes.
“Some of them have improved at this meet but they are all going to take stuff away they can work on.”
The team finished the competition in Doha with eight medals - seven silvers and one bronze. In addition the team set 18 British records and achieved a 63% personal best rate from the team of 11 athletes.
“We also had a bit of bad luck,” said Furniss. “We lost Ross Murdoch coming in and then Fran which probably hit our medal total a little bit.
“But if we look at this meet in isolation – we’ve had 18 British Records and what pleases me is the percentage of athletes that have moved it on from the heats to the finals. It’s around 90% so I am delighted with that as it is a key target of ours.”
Collectively British Swimming won 33 Commonwealth medals this year before embarking on a European campaign that saw them top the medal table.
“Even with our results at the Commonwealths and Europeans, we are not getting carried away,” continued Furniss. “We continue to follow a theme of resilience and the fact we set 18 British Records last week reinforces this.
“We are trying to sell it very much as normal behaviour, we don’t get excited about it, it’s just another day at the office. There’s no fear and why should there be? It’s what you train to do, it’s what you prepare to do and for me competition is where you demonstrate your preparation.
“If you’ve planned well you should compete well and sometimes athletes get all sorts of other things that interfere with that and that is what we are trying to do with good behaviours to eliminate those other things.”
In Doha, Commonwealth and European Champion Adam Peaty won two silver medals and broke British Records in the 50m and 100m Breaststroke while James Guy knocked four seconds off the previous 400m
Freestyle British standard on his way to silver.
“Adam (Peaty) and James (Guy) – they are great examples of where we want to get to,” said Furniss. “James didn’t just break the British Record, he took a sledgehammer to it and he clearly learnt from the 200m Free earlier in the meet.
“The majority of this team are probably better in a long-course pool but we didn’t pick the team based on the short-term goal of winning more medals here we picked the team for another reason and that was next year and the year after, and to be able to work on those behaviours with this group of athletes.”
