CRITICISM! Open Memo to Katie Hoff and Ryan Lochte!

As Cullen Jones would say, both of you are the CEOs of your careers and your "sales are down," review your coaching situation immediately.

Katie Hoff - you are swimming 1976 times in the 200 free. Sippy Woodhead, circa 1979, would have kicked your butt in her low-tech, Lycra suit.

Though you have access to better nutrition, immunizations her generation/mine never had, better starting blocks, deeper pool depths, dolphin kicks off the wall, and you are swimming in a swimsuit made by NASA's finest mad scientists, you are failing in taking the 200-free to the next level. The USA has not owned a record in that event for the past 30-years. Fix it.

Dagny Knutson is swimming 1979 times and Sippy can beat her too. One could ask what Dagny is doing differently to beat you but what one should really ask is what are the Europeans doing differently since they can "own" you both in an off-meet?

Laure Manadou knows how to swim a 200 Free and obviously so does Federica Pellegrini. They apparently sprint it like it's a quarter-mile, horse race. Laure Manaudou taught the Europeans how to do it why can't American swimmers learn how?

Here is an idea: You don't go out in a 58.00! You pretend your Libby Trickett, or Britta Steffen, and you go out in 55.00 and then when you are coming back and you can't hold on, you do what the Europeans do! You hold on!

Consider going to Italy or France and asking for help. Perhaps French Coach Philippe Lucas is available? Just do something, Australia has a nice ring to it too.

Ryan Lochte: It "smells" like you are over training. (Garbage yardage has an odor, right?) You changed something and it is not working. I would collect all of your times in both workouts and races and evaluate what you were doing when things were going great and discard those practices that are screwing with your "bonus money."

You are very charismatic and you could be the breakout swimmer like Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, or Johnny Weismuller are to their respective sports. Note, like a 50-meter free, it only takes one mistake to blow a medal.

Don't get married to a bad decision. The three aforementioned athletes certainly changed when they had to. You coach is your employee not your employer.

Special thanks to Mark Savage on this post.

The photo of Federica Pellegrini comes from Zimbio.com and they have another photo of her which they call Female Physique of the Day. :-O [Link]

"Eurosport" rumor denied! - Laure Manadou will not return to her former swim coach, Philippe Lucas!

Here is a Babelfish translation of the French text from JDD.fr: "...Then, Philippe Lucas, intervening on Internet site of the Point, contradicted any interview with Laure Manaudou and stated that it will not involve the Olympic champion left estrangement Beijing 2008: “They are conneries”, declared the technician laid off in US Melun, before putting completely fine at these rumours: “I will not take again Laure. It is not topicality. It is clear!”. ..." [Link]

I like Babelfish, the translations are so sketchy it is almost stream of consciousness!

If she needs a coach, and she was willing to work hard and enjoy complete anonymity, she should consider swimming at the University of Southern California in my hometown of Los Angeles!

"Mare Nostrum" is not a shopping mall but a swim meet tour in France

Laure Manaudou swam for a team called Canet when she was training in France. Her coach, Philippe Lucas, is credited for coaching her to the "Janet Evans" level and took pride in her accomplishments. Manaudou even lived with both he and his wife. Manaudou recently split with her coach and team and has now moved to Italy to train and to be near her boyfriend, Luca Marin.

Both Lucas and her Canet team were seemingly humiliated and subsequently had harsh words for both Manaudou and her new Italian coach, Paolo Penso, which Manaudou and the Italians took the high ground and replied back politely.

Now, a swim meet tour in France called the Mare Nostrum is about to take place at the Canet pool in which Manaudou was scheduled to race. Manaudou won't or can't race due to a fractured foot. It appears that she fractured the foot after being thrown into the water by her adopted teammates. But Canet is demanding that she come anyway and watch.

This is how acrimonious it has become:

• "Good for them. "If she's injured, she can't race, obviously, said the man at the helm of Canet, Jean-Marie Portes, in reference to news that Manaudou will not now race at the meet organised annually by her former home club in southern France after injuring a foot during celebrations for her new club in Turin in the wake of Italy's club championships in Rome last weekend."

• "But we demand her presence in the name of the moral contract she has signed up to. It's a simple matter of honouring her word. Her presence here will suffice," said Portes. [Link]

As nationalistic as America is accused to be, you would never see this sort of drama in America.

Don't make her angry! You wouldn't like Laure Manaudou when she is angry!

From Timed Finals: For those of you out there that are starting to get sick of “L’Affaire Manaudou,” [I'm not!] sorry…but this caught my attention and I think it’s worth talking about. Obviously with any breakup (and that’s what this is, maybe not in the conventional sense but certainly it has all the characteristics), feelings are hurt and people often speak very candidly about the other. Laure Manaudou’s departure has brought another response from her former coach, Philippe Lucas, and this one seems to border somewhere between genuine concern and political statement as Lucas was quoted as saying that he “is worried” about what the Italian doctors will do with her. Read more here: [Link]

Laure Manaudou is to great of a swimmer to even need drugs. She won't do it. Click on the photo to see my satire.

Philippe Lucas, Laure Manaudou's former coach, insults Italy, Manaudou, and a Dutch football team in one breath

Philippe Lucas coached Manaudou and made her the champion that she is. He deserves that credit utterly and completely. However, his histrionic rants regarding Laure Manaudou's integrity and the ethical nature of Italian doctors borders upon the irrational. Snippet from Swim News:

• In comments that will go down like a lead balloon in Turin, Lucas, asked by L'Equipe if he was worried for his former charge, he said: "Frankly? It drives me mad. I'm worried for one sole reason: ethics. Laure has always been a self-conscious girl. And there (in Turin), at the medical level, there's an air of danger when ... you see the doctors who will be watching over her (the French newspaper then places in parenthesis the words 'the old medicine of the football club Juventus'). The structure is unclear. We can't tell where this will lead her. She doesn't even know herself who will coach her. That's alarming!" [Link]

Manaudou's comments were more measured reassuring the public she wasweight training and swimming and that all was good.

My money is still on Kate Ziegler due to all of this drama surrounding her.