Sweetenham to be Cleared of Allegations
Jan 4, 2006
An independent inquiry has cleared Bill Sweetenham, Britain's performance director, of bullying accusations levelled at him by swimmers and a former table tennis player last year.
The inquiry, to be published later this month, has concluded that several retired Olympians cited in the article by Matthew Syed, a former table tennis player for Britain who now writes a sports column for the paper, do not consider themselves to have been bullied. According to the British media today, Sweetenham "has no case to answer".
Syed alleged that Sweetenham was a bully, had damaged British swimming and caused the retirements of 13 senior Britain team members. The claim was denied by Sweetenham, many of the swimmers involved and the national federation.
A source close to Sweetenham said: "It was always going nowhere. It was bullshit from the beginning. There are issues in British swimming but bullying is not one of them. Bill has been a great asset to Britain and taken the sport on in leaps and bounds. Athens was disappointing but then it took more than 25 years for Australia to get from a dark place to where it is today. Bill's been in Britain just five years. Give it time. You had a situation here where one day the paper ran a whole page accusing Bill. The next day, Craig Lord the swim reporter for the London Times, told us all that David Davies, Graeme Smith and lots of others on the current team backed Bill. Guess who we trust? I think the table tennis player should go back to the sport he knows something about. He clearly knows nothing about swimming."
The inquiry recommendations will be published after Sweetenham returns from his native Australia later in January and attends a meeting with his bosses at British Swimming.
Australian coach Bill Sweetenham has been cleared by an independent inquiry of bullying allegations made last year by former British table tennis player Matthew Syed. Syed had accused Sweetenham of damaging British swimming and causing the retirement of 13 senior British swimmers.

Sweetenham has been the performance director for British swimming since November 2000, when he took over from Deryk Snelling. His contract, which was recently renewed, runs up till the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.

Syed's claims had been denied by Sweetenham, British Swimming and many of the swimmers involved. Despite this and the result of the inquiry some of the swimmers maintain that the inquiry was not thorough enough.

The inquiry will be published later in the month when Sweetenham returns from Australia.