One has to question whether the coaches at the national level in our country are riding on past laurels. The saddest and most disturbing part of this statement is that everyone knows it, but everyone is scared to say it. Someone should have said it after the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Someone should have said it after the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games, after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and after the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games. Canada's hero, Mark Tewskbury, barely saved us from the embarrassment of having no individual medallists at swimming's biggest dance in 1992.
Someone has to point the finger.
Seeing that nobody else is prepared to do so, my finger points to the highest of the high performance coaches. Dave Johnson is not doing his job. Johnson reported after the Commonwealth Games in 1994 that our lack of success on the international level was due to him not receiving talented age group athletes. Checking American age group rankings, one discovers that our age group swimmers are on par with the development of American age groupers who year after year develop into the strongest swimming power in the world. Eventually, the only solution to this problem will be to change leadership in Canada.