The German Swimming Federation (abbreviated as DSV) has agreed to a termination of the contract of National Team Director Dirk Lange as of the end of 2011. This is a full year earlier than the contract was originally due to expire.
The apparent hang-up was a disagreement between him and Lutz Buschkow, the country’s High Performance Director (Buschkow has a diving background).
The move is not a surprising one after a disappointing medal performance at the World Championships. The German squad scored only 3 medals (all bronze) in Shanghai, and even more disappointingly only had 6 individual swims in finals. By comparison, they won 9 medals – 4 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze – in 2009 in Rome.
The decision for which Lange received the most criticism was the time standards that he set at last year’s World Championship Trials, where swimmers were effectively required to put up times that would stand in the world’s top 8 from the year before, but the trials were held only about 7 weeks before World’s. This forced many German swimmers into a full taper for the trials, and they were unable to cycle back to their peak performance for the big meet.
The writing was on the wall – Lange was not present either at the German SC National Championships or the European Short Course Championships, which is a truly strange encounter.
Some in the German community have been outraged and dismayed by what they perceive as a loss of sight of the long-term, as Germany has gone through many coaches in this Olympic cycle. The timing could be especially tough given the proximity to the Olympics, though in reality it seems as though his role in the training of German swimmers had been greatly diminished anyways.
Lange was previously the head of the South African Swimming Team.
So who had Mexico in the ‘Where he ends up next’ pool? Swimnews is reporting he’s signed a contract with Federación Mexicana de Natación in hopes of him shoring up their national team ahead of Guadalajara 2017.
and they probably don’t have to have FINA A cuts either.
Because I’m a geography geek, I actually went and checked to see if Greenland had their own national federation as recognized by FINA. (Hey, if the Faroe Islands competes independently as worlds and Euros…) Greenland is not a FINA member, so I assume they’d compete under a Danish flag. However the following countries and political entities are FINA members and maybe one of them would be looking for a national team director:
Gibraltar
Liechtenstein
San Marino
Moldova
Bangladesh
Mongolia
Nepal
North Korea
Turks and Caicos Islands
Suriname (what have they done since Anthony Nesty anyways?)
Palau
Tonga
Cook Islands
Yeah I’d say Denmark is doing quite phenomenal with the people they have in place right now.
agreed beachmouse or maybe greenland?
I don’t think Denmark needs or wants him right now. Maybe Iceland has an opening?
Lange is a jerk. Every South African and German swimmer I know could not stand him and were glad when he left/fired!!!
But I thought you were holding out for a specific, special Scandinavian country??
Erik, he’s gotta build up the credentials somewhere before he can just land a powerhouse gig like Denmark.