"An Australian swim coach has sparked a storm after admitting selling the training program used by his protege Jessica Schipper for "big money" to the Chinese girl who beat her at the Olympics.

Ken Wood sold his top-secret training methods, which transformed Schipper into a world-record breaking 200m butterflyer, to the Chinese coach of Liu Zige, according to News Ltd newspapers in Australia on Sunday.

Previously unknown, Liu came out of nowhere to win gold in the event here and shatter Schipper's world record by 1.22 seconds in the process, leaving the Australian a distant third.

It was only China's third gold since its prime at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when it won four."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080817/wl_asia_afp/oly2008swimauschn

Totally outrageous! A professional coach helping a foreigner, and a yellow one at that! He's spent 40 years building his knowledge and intellectual property. His business is selling coaching. He's coached swimmers to first and third places in the Olympics. What a hero.

True to form, the Aussie press are crucifying Ken Wood. He's sold out his "Top Secret" training methods. Those "Top Secret" training methods are his and his to sell. This is a classic Aussie press beat up.

I love Australia, but the narrow-minded parochialism shits me. I've been invited to leave (if you don't effing like the effing way we do things here the eff off back to effing pommieland) enough times to know that the country of my birth is populated by dullards.

Thats the way it is these days.
Bummer that he has to do it but the guy has to make a living for himself.

Theex- Japanese syncro coach I think now coaches the chinese team. Not un common these days..

Sorry for the rant Indo, but it gets right up my nose to see someone crucified for doing their job. If Aussie (sorry for the typo) sports were kind and gentle then I could see some grounds for criticism. As it happens, Aussies are "in your face" professionals, and should stop effing whinghing when their methods work for others.

Mate, I've read all about here in the papers. Seems they had nothing else to complain about as there wasn't enough smog in China to write about..

bang on Soubs, it's like the Aussie press see him as a Robert Hansen type: a CIA agent selling highly classified documents to the Russians.



Actually there have been two camps on the issue, those rapid ones calling him a traitor and those who see it as it is.

On Channel 7 in Australia, the Olympic show Yum-cha, ex swimmer Duncan Armstrong said he had no problems with it, the obnoxious cow beside him was one of the rabid.
They were his training plans and 40 years with experience behind them, they were not swimming Australia's plans, he is free do do what he likes with them.
Australia has employed foreign coaches and got help from abroad before.
Suddenly it goes the other way and there is hysteria

The Chinese swimmer actually trained in Australia with him earlier this year and he was offered a what has been quoted "big money" for the training plans, he was a private coach not employed by swimming Australia.

They were training plans, not a magic elixir, obviously the Chinese girl trained harder and applied the plans better than Schipper and won, Its clear to me with same training, the Chinese girl smoked the Aussie and that is what hurts the most it seems.
Schipper is Ken woods protege and star student, he was gutted to see her lose but at the end of the day she was not good enough and though to appease the rabid he has said he didn't want Lucy ( his nickname for the Chinese girl} to win, deep down he must be proud that someone using his training methods is Olympic champ and world record holder

Get over it Australia (the rabid ones going nuts) , these things happen, arguably the best rugby coach in the world (Robbie Deans of NZ) is the current coach of the Wallabies - oh no! he has taken all his secrets over to Australia, what are we going to do?! shock horror!

Thanks. I'm glad I'm not out on my own for once, trolling for Yamagata

Does anyone remember about (mumble mumble) 15 years ago, when Australia's Bulgarian(?) weightlifters were beaten by Bulgaria's Bulgarians? Then they were all busted for doping. There's a drug-gap. Their steroids are better than ours. I sent off a letter to the AIS urging them to invest more money in doping research.....

Funnily I haven't actually seen a thing about it here, and we have been watching most of the olympics (bumming around not working yet!) BPG saw it on a Japanese news site! First we heard of it. Anyway, who cares if he does it!

That's because you're reading the Worst Orstrayan, mate. Great paper

If it happened off the west end of Rottnest, or east of the nullabor, then it didn't happen at all

I haven't been reading the West at all since coming back We don't get the paper. I have not heard anything about it on channel 7s coverage of the olympics. They aren't making anything of it at all. And we have been watching a lot of it.

Yep and Wayne Bennett took his secrets over to coach the NZ rugby league team.

Rod Marsh went over to coach the England cricket team for a while.

Scott Gardner, Shane Sutton took their secrets over to Great Britain to help them flog us on the cycling track.

Alex Popov trained his whole swimming career in Australia using our resources and coaches, then stands on the blocks for Russia and beats us every time.

Simon Whitfield trained and educated in Australia won gold in the olympic triathlon in Sydney for CANADA.

Kate Allen grew up on a farm in South East Australia, trained in Geelong, won gold for AUSTRIA (not a typo) in the triathlon in Athens............

It goes on and on and on! It's nothing new. It's no secret, there is no "shock horror" People have been coming to Australia for years and using our coaches and resources then competing for their 'home' countries and beating us. And vise versa. I for one couldn't be more please about it and I've never heard anyone complain about it. It's all the better for sport. It shows how generous we are with our sporting knowledge and facilities ( although a lot of money changes hands)

Why do you guys get so worked up about what some tosser writes in the press? .........Jeeeeez. What do you do, search the net for stories where you can put the boot into the Aussies? Change the record.

This from John Coats President of the Australian Olympic Committee

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates admitted to reporters in Beijing that Australian coaches were low-paid or voluntary and were forced to seek income elsewhere.

But he said that training overseas swimmers should not be seen as unpatriotic.

"We are not a country that can point the finger at poaching," he told Australian Associated Press

Storm of controversy eh? you guys would believe anything.

Here's AFP

"BEIJING (AFP) - An Australian swim coach has sparked a storm after admitting selling the training program used by his protege Jessica Schipper for "big money" to the Chinese girl who beat her at the Olympics.

Ken Wood sold his top-secret training methods, which transformed Schipper into a world-record breaking 200m butterflyer, to the Chinese coach of Liu Zige, according to News Ltd newspapers in Australia on Sunday."

I would have let this one through to the wicket-keeper, but the memsahib chose to challenge me on this.

Question 1. Did the Jamaican sprinters train in the USA?

Question 2. Were the trainers national traitors?

Question 3. Should the unpatriotic traitors be put-to-death by hanging, or should they have spears inserted in the arsehole prior to being pinned on an anthill?

Thankfully, it is several years since I spent any time in Worstern Orstraya. A classic front page headline from the class-leading "newspaper" (when the England cricket team visited) was: "Why we Hate the Poms".

I guess when an African team visits WA, the headline will be "Why we hate the Niggers". Or an Asian team "Why we hate the Chinks", or "Why we hate the Japs".

Oh come on Soub! You know it has been an Aussie thing to bash the poms when it comes to cricket. But that's more to do with the fact that there are so many brits and descendants of brits living in Aus. You should know better than to make stupid comments like the one above about niggers or japs. Fair enough, there have been some stories in the press about the coach thing, but it is a non-issue here. No one is talking about it.

The Sun whips up a similar storm when Engurland plays Germany. I guess the WA paper is about the same quality as The Sun.

I doubt thought that it would have the wit that the Sun does for head lines and puns stuff. Some really are very clever.

Get off your bike, BP. The front page headline of the Worst Orstrayan was "Why we Hate the Poms".

This is racist shite, by any stretch. Take it to a civilised country and insert pejorative of choice.

True RD, some of the Sun's headlines are funny, but they can go a bit over the top at times. Page 3 rocks though!!!

Exactly BP.
The view that these guys get of Australian life through their little internet window all the way up there in Japan is humorous to be kind. I've been watching more TV, internet, news in the last 2 weeks than ever before. I've not seen anything about this story. The first i heard about it was from a narcky old ex-pomm ex-Aussie on a Japan snow forum. He then went on to call me a 'dullard" (WTF is that)


I'm sure they'd love to think we are all walking around crying in our handkerchiefs about the traitor coach that robbed us of our gold.

soub, get over your sour grapes with Aus mate. I know the place isn't perfect, but it's not as bad your memories make it. I'll admit that headline is racist, but that is not a typical way of doing things here. And I'll state again that you would NOT see headlines about niiggers or other such. Keep it in perspective of the sporting rivalry between our two countries and take it with a pinch of salt mate.

Hmmmm...

I haven't read the West Australian in a long time (maybe 5 or 6 months) - but I don't think we have a 'page 3' or equivalent.

I think our West Aussie boys are getting ripped off!