Bill joins foreign legion saving our sport

Sweetenham has been Australia's national youth coach for the past five years and played a part in Ian 'Thorpedo' Thorpe's career, although he takes no credit for the teenager's success, saying he is a unique athlete.

Four times Olympic head coach and head coach of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra for 10 years, Sweetenham was voted coach of the year three times Down Under.

Twenty seven of his swimmers have won medals at the Olympics and world championships, so he certainly has the pedigree to make a difference over here.

"I also spent nearly five years in Hong Kong coaching and I really enjoyed having to work in a system I wasn't used to. It really helped me as a coach," he said.

"I decided to leave Australia as I thought I had taken the youth programme as far as I could. I was scheduled to take over from the senior team's head coach Don Talbot, but he decided to stay on for a while and I didn't want to wait around," said Sweetenham, who is based at the Amateur Swimming Association's headquarters in Loughborough.

Australia were second behind the US in this year's Olympic swimming medal table, but it took years and millions of pounds to achieve that success. "We only won one bronze medal in Montreal in 1976 and after that things needed to change," said Sweetenham. Now he hopes to guide Britain through a similar revolution.

"Up until now, Britain have been relying on one or two swimmers to be successful. That is not enough.

"I will have two systems running. One will be called fast track and will be for swimmers I believe could be on the podium in four years' time.

"We will support them and develop them quickly. We are in trouble with the men's group, but the women are in good shape. There are about eight or 10 who are well placed in the world rankings and we will really work with them.

"The other system will be longer term, for eight-year-olds upwards. If we look at a 12-year plan that means they will be 20 at the 2012 Games and the average age of Olympic finalists is 22 for women and 24 for men," said Sweetenham, who admits to being only an average swimmer himself.

But it will not only be the swimmers who will improve under Sweetenham's guidance. Coaches will also receive special training.

"I want the best group of educated coaches in the world, then we can have swimmers who are superior mentally and physically. It is no good training swimmers and taking them all over the world for experience and not the coaches, as the swimmers will start to think they know more than their coaches," he said.

But Sweetenham knows competition will be tough from Australia and the US.

He said: "The United States have put a lot more money in and Australia have an enormous budget, so the only way we can compete is by having swimmers who are mentally tough, invincible.

"Because of the disadvantages we have to be superior in every way.

"We need to change the structure of how we compete and select teams. We need to somehow put swimmers under pressure and create an atmosphere that is more challenging and demanding than they are used to, so they can compete at the Olympics."

A lack of facilities has often been blamed as a reason for Britain's lack of success in the pool, and although Sweetenham realises this is a problem, he said: "From the word go, I do not want a reason to not succeed."

Now it is up to the British to keep up their side of the bargain and become a world force.