BILL SWEETENHAM
Bill Sweetenham was born in 1950 in the country part of Australia and grew up in a small mining township. He swam competitively himself before turning to coaching at an early age. He progressed from country to city to elite level coaching, and was Australia's national coach for many years.
Highlights of Bill's career are Stephen Holland, Michelle Ford and Tracey Wickham's many world record swims, becoming Australia's first State Director of Coaching (Queensland), his position as Head Swimming Coach at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, head Swimming Coach at the Hong Kong Sports Institute, the many times he led the Australian Swim Team at Olympic and Commonwealth Games, and being awarded the Order of Australia in 1989 and the Prime Minister's award in 1991. In 1991, Bill's last season as Head Swimming Coach at the Australian Institute of Sport, the team included a current world champion (long course), a world record holder (short course), 2 future Olympic silver medallists, 3 future Olympic bronze medallists, 6 Commonwealth gold medallists, 4 double Pan Pacific gold medallists, 5 world record breakers (short course), 9 world champions (short course) and 9 Commonwealth record holders (long course). There were 10 Olympians selected on the 1992 team from Bill's groups of AIS swimmers. He has placed 63 swimmers on National Open major teams with 27 of them winning medals in long course major meets and he has worked with 9 world record holders in both long and short course meets.
Bill was National Youth Coach for Australian Swimming Inc (1995-2000) and his task involved traversing Australia, preparing up and coming swimmers with talent for 2000 Olympic Games and beyond. Equally important in this role was to educate, motivate and prepare a select group of coaches for the same purpose. From this programme, there have been 4 world champions and world record holders etc., along with several new national coaching staff appointments. During the inaugural (1995-2000) period of the National Youth Programme, the performance of major national team rookies has gone from below 20% to well over 90 % with the 1999 Pan Pacific Team performance where 11 rookies and a total of 17 members of the Youth Programme scored well over 90% personal bests where the team average was 46%.
Bill has been selected Head Coach of four Olympic Game and Coach on six Commonwealth Games Teams, and has enjoyed being personal coach to world record holders, Olympic and world champions. Bill considers his best coaching effort was placing 9 swimmers on the 1989 Pan Pacific Team with a 100% strike rate for improved heats to final performances and 100% personal best times strike rate.
He continues to lecture, publish and conduct clinics on a variety of subjects worldwide. Currently Bill is the National Performance Director of British Swimming (Nov 2000). The British Team had an all time record-breaking year with 7 world championship medals, European Short Course Champions and 41 British Senior Long Course records. 78% personal best at World Championships. At the 2002 Commonwealth Games the team recorded an all time best result of 11 gold, 10 silver and 14 bronze with 3 (1-2-3) finishes (no other nation achieved any (1-2-3) finishes), and a gold in the women's 4x200 relay, which Australia had never in the history of the Commonwealth Games been beaten. This result was double what had ever been achieved previously. For the first time in history Scotland beat Canada at the Commonwealth Games in Swimming.