At the Barcelona Olympic games the national climate of the unified countries was one that should have caused athletes to perform poorly at Barcelona. However, that did not occur in swimming. Some reasons for their outstanding achievements have direct application to Australian swimming and are explained here. Conclusians for Australia: Scientific support services for elite Australian swimmers should cover the whole nature of the athlete and not be restricted or biased to one discipline. It is contended that ASI is heavily and unwisely influenced by physiologists to the detriment of more valuable areas of scientific support. Decisions concerning the program of individual athletes should be made with their best interests in mind and be influenced by many rather than few sources of input. With national organizations it is necessary to "jolt" the community into reaction by centralizing activities to simulate performance improvement. However, in time, that centralization must be decentralized once again to allow the individuality which is the prevalent "cultural force" of democracies to propel performance development even further. Australian swimming would do well to heed the lessons of the Russians because similarities are too obvious to be ignored.Centralized support and advisory services with decentralized coaching and athlete financial assistance could be argued as being appropriate for Australian swimmers.
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