Off The Blocks Swimming Podcast · Off The Blocks Swimming Podcast

The Shannon Rollason Podcast Episode 103 - Interview with Wayne Goldsmith

·1 hr 33 min·5 clips

Bill Sweetenham got a swimmer to choose “an eight or a nine” by asking how to improve a session out of 10.

1. Off The Blocks Swimming Podcast Episode 103 with Wayne Goldsmith centers on how Australian swimming coaching has changed from the 1990s to the present. 2. Robbie Cox hosts, Shannon Rollason co-hosts, and Wayne Goldsmith joins as a speaker, author, and mentor with 35 years of conference and coaching work. 3. The episode asks what Australian swimming can still learn from Don Talbot, Bill Sweetenham, and Gennady Turetsky after Goldsmith has also worked in rugby, cricket, league, triathlon, and NRL. 4. Goldsmith says he escaped floods on the North Coast of New South Wales, with three roads out and trees blocking one of them. 5. He says he drove to Sydney and flew to Auckland for rugby work because a conference and New Zealand commitments forced a detour. 6. He explains that he still loves swimming, but now looks at coach development through other sports and other countries. 7. Goldsmith says his time with Sweetenham, Talbot, Joe King, Carew, Frosty, and Vince shaped his coaching view in the late 1980s and 1990s. 8. He also says work with Eddie Jones, Sir Graham Henry, John Mitchell, and Wayne Smith widened that view in the early 2000s. 9. Goldsmith tells Shannon Rollason that overseas coaches often came to him for help while local coaches sometimes did not seek out the same expertise. 10. He uses the phrase “never a sage in your own hometown” to describe how familiar figures get overlooked. 11. Goldsmith recalls Gennady Turetsky saying “Every swimmer is different” and warning that Australians did too many drills. 12. He says Gennady compared swimming technique to a schoolchild writing the letter “A,” where every version looks different. 13. Goldsmith says that lesson stayed with him for more than 20 years and became a repeated example in his own talks. 14. He describes Don Talbot holding up medal counts from 1976, 1982, 1984, 1988, and 1992 to argue that Australia had become a minor player. 15. He says Talbot’s blunt line was that the country was “not a serious swimming nation anymore.” 16. Goldsmith also recalls Talbot telling him he was “too soft” and wanted to be liked instead of fighting for swimmers. 17. He says Bill Sweetenham later used a question-based method, asking a swimmer to rate a session out of 10 and suggest one more level. 18. The interview is conversational, reflective, and full of shared memories between two coaches who know the same people and eras. 19. Coaches, swimmers, and swimming history fans will get the most from this. 20. Listeners wanting a short celebrity chat without coaching detail may skip it.

As heard by us

A swim history conversation about memory, turnover, and why old ideas still matter.

Shannon and Wayne look back at Australian swimming as a living memory, asking who held it, how ideas moved through the sport, and why the old lines of continuity once made the system feel more joined up. The episode keeps its eye on heritage without getting stuck in nostalgia.

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Why you'd press play

If you want Wayne Goldsmith on swimming history and why the sport does things the way it does.

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