One of the country’s longest-serving swimming administrators claims Australia could endure a devastating home 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics if the Queensland and federal governments continue to neglect the sport’s grassroots.
Swimming Queensland chief executive Kevin Hasemann warned that Australia could capitulate on the world stage in 2032 if there wasn’t more support for talent pathways.
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s philanthropy had fuelled Queensland’s unprecedented success of late, he added. Hasemann agreed with Olympic champion swimmer Cate Campbell’s recent observation the billionaire had “saved” the sport.
“In the case of Swimming Queensland, the simple fact of the matter is that we’re reliant on Mrs Rinehart’s support to keep our vital pathways programs afloat,” Hasemann told The Weekend Australian.
“Without it, I would now be dismantling them – to the peril of Australia’s 2032 medal prospects.”
Two weeks ago, the federal Labor government announced a $283m war chest to fund high performance over the next two years, but Hasemann pointed out it was needed to foster young, talented swimmers and their coaches who would be crucial to the Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics.
While Australian swimming is stronger than ever heading into the Paris Games this month – fuelled by exceptional Queensland talent such as Kaylee McKeown, Ariarne Titmus, Shayna Jack and Mollie O’Callaghan – Hasemann said the sport was heading for a “reality check”.
“Australian swimming is about to have a reality check as some of our most highly decorated athletes hang up their Speedos post-Paris.
“By the time of our home Games, nearly all current national team members will have left the sport,” Hasemann said.
“Astonishingly, in spite of our swimmers’ extraordinary accomplishments at the Tokyo Games, followed by ascendancy to the top of global swimming at last year’s World Championships, the amount of pathways funding Swimming Queensland receives from the federal and state governments is woefully inadequate, and, in fact, is much less than leading into 2021.”
Hasemann said Rinehart had been a saviour for the sport but he was “nonplussed” that the governing body, Swimming Australia, had failed to maintain its longstanding relationship with Australia’s richest woman.
Rinehart cut ties with Swimming Australia in 2021 because athletes were receiving their payments late and she didn’t feel like she had a voice in the organisation.
Rinehart had also asked the Swimming Australia board to add a delegate from her company, Hancock Prospecting, but the representative was not given voting power and repeatedly asked to leave meetings due to claimed conflicts. “I find the falling out between Swimming Australia and Mrs Rinehart hard to fathom,” Hasemann said.
“From our relationship with Mrs Rinehart, I know she has high expectations regarding the administration of the funding she provides, and we’ve experienced no difficulties in fulfilling them.”
The Hancock Prospecting Swimmer Support Scheme was established in 2012, after a disastrous London Olympics where the team won just one gold medal.
It now provides swimmers with more than $3m in direct financial support annually to “help pay their bills and educate themselves while striving for international success in their chosen sport”.
In addition, Rinehart provides medal incentive funding, which over the past year has amounted to more than $1m in payments to Australian swimmers.
The Weekend Australian understands no Australian swimmer has objected to her funding.
Hasemann has been a public supporter of Rinehart. In concert with a group of Australian swimmers – including Rio Olympic freestyle gold medallist Kyle Chalmers – he recently requested portraits of Rinehart be taken down from the National Gallery of Australia because they were deemed “offensive”.
Hasemann has also overseen the rise of Queensland swimmers in the Olympic ranks.
From the inception of the modern Olympics in 1896 through to 1996, just five Queensland swimmers won six events – but the 2000s has seen the sport boom in the state.
From the year 2000 through to 2021, 10 Queensland swimmers won 15 individual events, and Queenslanders comprised most, and often all, of Australia’s gold medal-winning relay teams.
At the 2023 World Championships and World Para Championships, Queensland swimmers won a staggering 44 medals, including relays, which represented nearly all of Australia’s medal tally.
Meanwhile, NSW, the largest swimming state, has slipped down the ranks.
The last NSW swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal was in 2004 – that was Olympic great Ian Thorpe.
NSW now has just five swimmers on the Australian Olympic team for Paris.
Hasemann said the “mouth-watering” statistics made a compelling, incontrovertible case for more money” to be funnelled into Queensland’s development pathways.
“For Australia to take on the world’s best and shine again in 2032 – just eight short years from now – we face the herculean task of finding and developing a new cohort of champion swimmers,” he said.
“To do so, we need adequate funding support to invest in and expand on our time-proven pathway programs, which include the continual development of our emerging coaches. Without it, high expectations of Queensland swimmers replicating their amazing Tokyo record will become a pipe dream, and Australia’s prospects of a strong medal tally torpedoed.
“Queensland swimmers thrilled us to bits at the Tokyo Games. At those Olympics, they stood atop the medal dais at least once on every night of competition, and won nine of the 16 gold medals claimed by the entire Australian Olympic team, while at the Paralympics, they won five of Australia’s six gold medals.
“If the governments choose not to help us till the soil and fertilise the ground from which a new crop of world-beating swimmers will grow, we need to prepare ourselves for a repeat of the 2012 London Olympics failure.
“I’m sure the Australian public will be dismayed if, despite billions of dollars being spent on staging the home games, the national anthem is rarely played. The party will be a fizzer.”
Hasemann also said the new Swimming Australia constitution was bad for the sport.
“The other biggest threat facing our sport is the new Swimming Australia constitution foisted on member organisations by World Aquatics and the Australian Sports Commission late last year,” he said.
“Its effect will be insidious and it will, over time, further marginalise grassroots swimming because a majority of people on the SA Board are now unelected and, therefore, unaccountable to the sport.”
“Swimming Queensland, which voted against the new constitution, believes too great a proportion of unelected directors can easily result in a board no longer being representative of active participants in the sport or activity.
“This change was imposed on our sport without there being a whiff of impropriety, any suggestion of a breach of the swimming rules, or any claim of financial mismanagement. Counterintuitively, it coincided with Australia becoming the No.1 swimming nation in the world.
“The SQ success story disproves the modern wisdom being propagated that boards elected by the grassroots of a sport are, by definition, inadequate.”
