We knew from his contract extension announced back in 2015 that Swimming Australia Head Coach Jacco Verhaeren would remain at the helm through the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, but anything beyond that was still up in the air. That is, until now.
Per The Sydney Morning Herald, Verhaeren will be returning to Europe after Tokyo.
Verhaeren has been at the Aussie helm since 2013, having left his role as Technical Director for the Royal Dutch Swimming Federation (KNZB). He is among those credited with rehabbing the Aussie swimming culture after a tumultuous 2012 Olympics, which included the ‘Stilnox scandal’ and disappointing results overall in London.
The Dutchman is also responsible for the reshaping of the Australian Trials timing to model that of the United States, with Trials moving closer to the main event. We saw this first be implemented last year in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games and also just last week with the World Trials prior to Gwangju.
Now comes the hunt to replace very big shoes to be left by Verhaeren, with some looking to the Aussie past of potentially looking at past National Team Coach Leigh Nugent or Rohan Taylor.
Additional internal names will no doubt include Aussie coaching royalty to the tune of Michael Bohl of Griffith University, Richard Scarce of Bond, Simon Cusack of NSWIS, just to name a few.
Another interesting prospect could be American coach Gregg Troy, the storied University of Florida coach with such powerhouse swimmers as Ryan Lochte and Caeleb Dressel to his credit. Troy had conversations with Swimming Australia for the Head Coach role back in 2013, but he withdrew his name from consideration.
Troy retired from the Florida coaching position last April after 20 years in the role, so perhaps the timing is right to throw his name back into the ring.
Tracey Menzies, who coached Ian Thorpe in the back-half of his career, has also been climbing the coaching ladder recently, including a stop at the Australian Institute of Sport with the Australian National Training Centre.
Lets hope sailor boy goes with him i remember a letter he penned on the Australia swimming website about a year after he took the role stating Australia would be the number one swimming country come Rio. Jacco has been a major disappointment we go into major meets with so many mumber 1 year times to only bomb out and some of his relay decisions had been shear folly
Shambolic team please explain you referring to the number of the team or what ?
I don’t understand why you need a narional performance director and a national coach. Australia has many excellent coaches working with swimmers on a day-to-day basis. What exactly does the national coach add? The USA copes just fine without one and appointing instead a head coach and assistants for each major champtionship.
thats a great point ……
You need someone who’s independent (and doesn’t have their own swimmers on the team that they might favour). Other than that, I guess it doesn’t matter whether you label them a Head Coach or a Performance Director.
I’ll pack his bags for him.
Some dumb relay selections over the last few years.
I agree. The men’s 4X200 in Rio comes to mind in particular. The national coach didn’t think Cameron McEvoy was up to swimming in either the heats or the final even though he had gone 1.45 at the Australian trials. \With a bit of imagination or daring he might also have selected Kyle Chalmers who admitedly was inexperienced in that event but had put down a decent 200 time in a junioe event and was on fire. Instead he selected a swimmer who split 1.47 something which ended up costing a medal.
Also the mens 4×100 free in kazan, where mcevoy was rested even though magnussen had pulled out of the team altogether. the team finished outside of the top 12 and missed automatic olympic qualification.
And Ashley Delaney swam the heats and cost
The team dearly.
Let’s not forget Leigh Nugent was the head coach when the London 2012 debacle was going on.. so I’m surprised if he’s actually up for the head coach job again when he was removed or left as part of the changes they were wanting to introduce post London
And I wouldn’t want to take away the current coaches from their swimmers to be the head coach because they still have work to do long term as coaches for their swimmers development
It might be time to try an American head coach for Aussie swimming .. just to instil the American team spirit and nationalism and aggressive competitiveness they display at major meets like the Olympics ..
why the down votes? I can understand Australia not wanting to take anything from the Americans – they are a phenomenal swimming country, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing, per se. USA swimming has its own problems, to be sure, but American swimming crushes it repeatedly (of course we have 330 million people to draw from, but still…).
people outside USA have brains do not need snake oil salesmen and prosperity gospel preachers to change something…..
I just don’t think this works. When Dennis Pursley tried that with the British team it just wasn’t the right approach. Things that work so well for the US can’t be forced on other countries and expected to have the same effect.
Jacco certainly hasn’t had the impact I feel Australia would of hoped, personally I feel it’s been a disaster. Sprinting was his speciality and Aussie women are really on fire but bombed at olympics, Kyle chalmers wins yet Aussie men have been poor in general. They’ll always have someone going fast ( Larkin / Horton / winnington) but no consistency between meets, for me they never rebuilt and recovered after Perkins/Klim/ susie O’Neill / Thorpe / hacket/ Welsh era.
As for gregg Troy , wow that would be a statement in going the opposite direction.