8 Sep 2011

Burmester happy with new swimming role

6:25 am on 8 September 2011

A possible blueprint for a new high performance swimming programme has been drawn up by the swimmer who triggered the highly critical independent review of Swimming New Zealand's current top tier programme.

Moss Burmester retired after last year's Delhi Commonwealth Games, saying there was a lot of distrust in the high performance programme and that swimmers were too scared to voice their concerns, for fear of losing their place in the national squad.

That led to the SPARC-commissioned Ineson report which labelled the sport's high performance programme as dysfunctional and recommended a new structure be implemented.

In the wake of that report Swimming NZ chair Murray Coulter and high performance manager Jan Cameron have resigned.

Burmester, who is now part of the newly-formed Swimmers Association which represents elite swimmers, says they've devised a structure and given it to Swimming New Zealand and SPARC.