Legendary swim coach Laurie Lawrence backs Swimming Australia president John Bertrand in Rio row

LEGENDARY coach Laurie Lawrence has backed John Bertrand’s performance as Swimming Australia president as political battle lines are drawn in the wake of Australia’s dismal Olympic performance.

Swimming Australia president John Bertrand.

LEGENDARY coach Laurie Lawrence has backed John Bertrand’s performance as Swimming Australia president as political battle lines are drawn in the wake of Australia’s dismal Olympic performance in Rio.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates has singled out Australian Sports Commission head John Wylie for drafting leading Victorian figures, such as Bertrand, into roles as heads of Olympic sports.

Swimming figures privately believe Coates is using the sport’s paltry return of three gold medals in Rio as a wrecking ball as friction between the AOC and ASC intensifies.

Coates believes Wylie’s Winning Edge strategy, which has cut scholarships and slashed Australian Institute of Sport backing in favour of a tiered funding model, has flopped.

“The corporate model of having leaders of Olympic sports who are connected to the top end of town, such as Swimming Australia’s John Bertrand and Cycling Australia’s Malcolm Speed, has failed,” Coates said in Rio.

Swimming Australia president John Bertrand.

“It is OK to have these business-oriented men on the board of Olympic sports, but not as president.

“John Wylie said early in the Rio Games that if swimming produced the expected results, after one gold medal at the London Olympics, a statue should be erected and called Bertrand the Redeemer.

“A figurine might be more appropriate.”

Lawrence, a veteran of eight Olympic Games and mentor to a string of champions, defended Bertrand.

“I think John Bertrand has done a fantastic job,” Lawrence said.

“He’s helped create a really good culture among the Dolphins. He’s made them proud to call themselves a Dolphin.

“But I was bitterly disappointed with the results in Rio and I hate the word failure but the failure is that we didn’t race enough in the lead-up.

“We had had nine world No 1 swimmers going in, we had more than the Americans.

“But the Americans came to race and Australia came to swim. There’s a big difference.”

Lawrence urged Bertrand to instigate an immediate review into the Dolphins’ performance.

But he said he had no interest in intervening in the festering row between Coates, Wylie and high-profile figures such as Americas Cup-winning skipper Bertrand.

“I’m not a bloody politician,” Lawrence said.

“All I’m interested in is giving these kids a go.

“And for those people talking about cutting the funding for our athletes, do they want to go back to the bad old days to Montreal in 1976 (when Australia won a silver and four bronze)?

“I don’t know the answer but it’s not cutting funding and if you look at what the British have done, that lottery is a fantastic thing.”

Australia slumped to 10th on the medal tally in its worst Olympic performance in 24 years with 29 medals in Rio, while Great Britain soared to second overall with 67 medals, including 27 golds.

UK Sport receives more than $900million annually from the National Lottery Fund, which was introduced in 1997.

Australia’s total Olympic funding since the London Games was $340million.

Australia’s medal tally has steadily declined from a high of 58 medals in Sydney 2000.