There is a sense of awe, almost trepidation, as we step into to the HQ of Chris Martin, Head Swimming Coach for the Scottish Institute of Sport. 

Here is a guy who has coached athletes to Olympic gold in one of the world’s toughest and most competitive sports; a guy who has dragged Scotland kicking and screaming back into the deep end of international swimming after years of bobbing up and down in the shallows; a guy who is more widely read than most university professors; a guy who notoriously dislikes journalists…

So we are glad that his eight years in Scotland have been highly successful.  Hopefully, when In The Winning Zone pester him with question after question, answering them should raise a smile to his face.  If he can pass on even a fraction of the inspiration to us in this interview as he has to countless Scottish swimmers since 1999, we will go home happy.

So considering Chris’s track (or pool?) record, the obvious question to ask is, how do you produce a world class swimmer?

“Well you can’t put in what God has left out, as the guy said in Chariots of Fire!”  He started.  We weren’t expecting a movie quote.  But it makes sense. 

“But a lot of things have to come together.  You definitely need hard work, you definitely need a modicum of talent, but the most important things, I always believed, are perseverance and self belief,” says the American coach.

“Those are the two things that will go the longest way in my experience.  I can’t say why, but it’s just what I have observed.”

In Scotland we have most of those things.  Scots are renowned hard workers, and we are never short of talented young athletes.  Perseverance comes through in any Scot you will ever see compete in elite sport.  He or she may not win, but they will certainly never give up.  But self belief?  Selfishness in any form doesn’t really fly in Scotland.

“I have noticed there is very much of a group mentality in Scotland.  Which in its own way is a good thing, but a lot of times when people get to the crucial situations they feel as if they are carrying a lot of people on their back.  They are carrying their families, they are carrying their town and they are carrying their Scottishness.” 

Look at Andy Murray or Colin Montgomerie.  Before any match in their respective sports, all hopes are pinned on them.  If they win, they aren’t just a Scot, they are Scotland.  They represent every single one of the five million of us.  Yes, we have a right to be proud of our sports heroes, but is it fair to pin everything on them?  It isn’t the same elsewhere, as Martin is quick to point out.
“I’m from America, and in America, it’s all about me baby!  People will roll the dice because if they win, great, they are the ones that are famous.  No-one else.  If they lose they go back into obscurity.  It is a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained.  But as people come up the hill in Scotland, and the UK in general, the expectations get put on them.”

So when it comes to winning, though it may go against the Scottish ethos, there is nothing wrong with being selfish.  In fact, Martin recommends it.  “Selfishness is good, because the winning mentality comes from the ruthlessness of wanting to be up there.”

Chris, who has 25 years coaching experience, comments that swimming is a sport that is generational, and that the generations come by pretty fast.  This can mean he is working with different swimmers of different levels and age-groups at any one time, thus ensuring that for every successful athlete rolled off the production line, there is another ready to step on.

“You always want to make sure that the wave in front does the best that it can, but that there is always another coming right behind it.”

So he spends as much time looking for and nurturing the next big thing as he does working with established champions.  But he takes a different slant on talent identification to most.

“Talent ID has become somewhat of a pejorative, and to me Talent ID is as much situational as it is based on organic talent.  For a talent to progress it has to have certain support services.  So first and foremost the coach and the athlete must have what they need to get better.  Sometimes we have to consider their personal situation, their family situation or their financial situation.”

This is a much more holistic approach than the traditional method of scouting for potential, as Chris points out.  “Humans are not time sequenced beings; you cannot say ‘this person is this age and does that time, ergo they are going to be good’ or ‘this person can’t do this time at this age, ergo they are going to be bad.’ That doesn’t work, that doesn’t reflect human life.”

Take the example of the Institute’s latest protégé, Hannah Miley.  In the past few months the 17 year-old starlet has shattered record after record in Scotland and the UK in the individual medley.  Chris has been watching her progression since she was a nipper.

“I have known her father, who is her coach, pretty much since I had came here, because he had invented the aqua-pacer and I was interested in that.  I used to go up to his house, and we used to talk about swimming and the ideas he had.  At this time Hannah wasn’t even on the radar, but I knew the approach he was going to take with her.  At the time I used to tell him it was really hard coaching your own kid, and we talked about what that entailed and how difficult it would be, but he has done a fantastic job.”

When the time was right, Chris stepped in to ensure Hannah got the right coaching at the right time, even if it meant he had to bend the rules a little.  As he said, talent ID is as much situational as it is based on organic talent. 

“We had to take her into the Institute at 14, the youngest person we ever had.   There was some controversy about doing that.  But at the same time I convinced the powers that be that the approach we were taking with her was holistic and that having made it that far she had a really good chance of going all the way.  So that’s what we did.” 

Keep your eye out for her at the Olympics next year.

But Hannah is just one of a string of success stories to come through the Institute via Chris Martin.  Commonwealth and European champion Kirsty Balfour is another, along with international medallists Gregor Tait, David Carry, Caitlin McClatchey and Kris Gilchrist.  The list goes on. 

But this stream of talent has only just started to come through.  Before this golden generation, Scottish swimming was in the doldrums, bereft of medals and enthusiasm.  So what did he do to change things around so drastically and so quickly?

“That has been caused by an improvement in the programmes we have had in Scotland, and an improvement in the coaches at all levels.   My big thing all along wasn’t just about making the athletes better, it was about making the athlete to coach unit much better, so that when the coach gets another swimmer, he or she will be farther along than when they got the first one. 

“That gives Scotland a future, that gives us a chance to improve as a nation.  If we just had a linear approach to each athlete, then there is no incentive for the coach to do that job again and again.  And in a small place like this, we need every single person, man, woman and child, pulling in the right direction every chance they get.”

What Chris is saying is that there is no textbook for coaching.  Athletes are not robots, they are people, so the relationship between every athlete and every coach should by default be different, and every coach should approach each athlete as an individual, with no pre-determined mindsets.  There is no such thing as an expert coach.

“It is a completely different way of looking at things. It is not about ticking things off on a check list.  It is about knowledge.  Knowledge is a tool to help you make the athlete better.  It is not an end onto itself, it is not a programme that you impose on people.  That’s not what it’s for.

“You learn as much as you can about everything, but you don’t form an opinion about what you think is good and what isn’t.  They are just tools in your toolbox.  Then you approach the organism that you have, look at it, think about it, then reach in your toolbox and see what fits it.”

Martin has been around the block a few times, or done a few lengths, in swim-speak.  He started out as a prep school coach in the US, moving into the prestigious collegiate circuit.  Fifteen years ago he coached young American Nelson Diebel to an Olympic gold in Barcelona.  Now at the Institute, he is in what he calls his “second, or maybe third career”

So what keeps him motivated after all this time?

“I just got two emails from two of my former swimmers, and they wrote to me about their lives and how some of the lessons they learned in sport carried them through some hard times in life, and that makes me glad that I did it.  If people ask me what is the greatest thing I got out of swimming, it is that I had the privilege of working with some unbelievably hard workers who gave everything.”

Chris Martin still may not like journalists, but he likes athletes who work hard and give their all.  If in another fifteen years Scotland’s swimmers are writing him similar emails, then we can safely say his time in our fair land has been a success story.  Though we can probably say that now.

RO

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