European Aquatics Athletes Committee chair Tancock reviews progress and charts ambitions ahead of LA 2028 Games

On-site interaction with competitors has become a key strategy for the European Aquatics Athletes Committee, established in 2022, which increased in size at the EA Congress held in Tbilisi last October and also became gender-balanced.

There are now seven members – Simona Rushton (CZE, swimming); Caroline Jouisse (FRA, open water); Kristof Rasovszky (HUN, open water); Simone van de Kraats (NED, water polo), Andrija Prlainovic (SRB, water polo), Renaud Barral (BEL, artistic swimming) and Emina Pasukan (BIH, swimming).

Ireland’s Oliver Dingley (diving and high diving) is secretary to the Committee, with Emma Garcia of Spain (artistic swimming) holding the post as vice-chair.

Great Britain’s Olympian and former world record holder Liam Tancock (swimming) was re-elected as chair, and as such commands a position in the bureau and a vote in the EA Congress.

Here, in the first of a two-part article, Tancock looks back at the progress made by the Committee over the past three years – and assesses the challenges and opportunities of the next three-year cycle that will include the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

Reflecting on the activity of the EA Athletes Committee he has chaired since 2022, Britain’s Liam Tancock paid tribute to the co-operation received from the federation.

“I feel that European Aquatics has truly given the athletes free rein and said ‘what do you need from us and how can we be more athlete-focused?’

“Even to the point when we said last year that to really get first-hand feedback, to speak to athletes, coaches, support staff, stakeholders, whoever it might be, we needed to be on pooldeck at major competitions.

“So we brought that forward and said for the key competitions, both junior and senior, we would like an athlete representative there so we can engage and get first-hand feedback.

“Obviously we complete a report post-competition, but sometimes being in the moment and seeing things happen is really positive.

“From this summer athlete representatives have been at these competitions and that’s been another big step forward. So we can feed information back to the Athletes Committee, to the technical committees, to the Bureau and the European Aquatics office – in other words any relevant body.

“Engagement’s been really good. And obviously the longer athlete representatives are present at competitions it will also gain more trust from current athletes.”

Tancock’s empathy with fellow swimmers is strong after a long career in which he competed at the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Games  won world long and short course golds plus four Commonwealth titles, and held the world long course 50m backstroke record for almost a decade.

“We’re either athletes or we’ve been athletes, so we know exactly what these guys are going through,” the 40-year-old added. “That mutual respect is really important. We can have a conversation at the right time. And we know what is the right time.

“We’ve been involved in, even, start times at an event. When would an athlete like to start an open water swim race, for example. Do they want to start at 7am, or do they want to start at 10am?

“I think the longer we go and the more active we are the more we will see and be involved in decisions which might be seen as quite small but can actually make a big difference.

“And when we have suggested making changes in this area the reaction has been: ‘Oh, OK, what do you want? OK, we can make that happen, no problem.’ So that’s been quite exciting.

“And it helps that everyone on the technical committees and in the Bureau are on the same terms as us, until 2028.”

Tancock also underlined the growing importance of having athlete representatives on the EA’s technical committees.

“One of our key things as a group, which we learned quite quickly, was that lots of the day-to-day background work of each discipline is actually done in the technical committees.

“So we were saying we think an athlete should sit on each one of the technical committees. We brought that to the Bureau and the reaction was ‘Oh, we’ve not really thought about that before, but what a great idea.’ And it was voted on and signed off at Congress.

“It’s been a really positive step forward. Because that’s where the planning of events and the future implementation of anything within  discipline, such as rule changes within artistic swimming.

“We can now see first-hand what really goes on in the sports and disciplines. We’ve been welcomed into those groups and listened to.

“I’m someone who doesn’t just want to have a meeting for a meeting’s sake. We have four, five, six meetings a year when key things come up.

“The technical committees meet, and if there’s something really important the athlete representative generates a report. Most recently we’ve had things in high diving, talking about safety, with board height being a big discussion.

“There have also been lots of rule changes within artistic swimming. We are also involved with a research study at the moment looking into temperature in open water swimming.

“So there’s lots going on behind the scenes, and athletes are giving feedback over next stages and next steps.”

Tancock has made a point in recent years of keeping in touch with his counterparts in World Aquatics.

“It’s not within our remit but we think it’s important to stay connected with World Aquatics,” he said.

“We’ve got a small, informal meeting set up in order to catch up with the new chair to see how things might be aligned and what we can do to help support World Aquatics – and vice versa.

“I think that in terms of continental federations from the global federation we are almost the only one that exists in terms of this support. And I think we are almost ahead of the game in terms of the world as well.

“It’s all about the sharing of information. There’s no point in doing things 10 times when someone’s already done it. Every now and again if we feel it’s relevant we can bring them in to our meetings.

“I wasn’t ever an official member of the FINA Athlete Committee back in the day but I was invited to quite a lot of their meetings online and in person, and there have been a couple of times in the last two years where I have sat in on a World Aquatics meeting because it linked to us.”

Looking ahead towards LA 2028, he added: “At the moment we don’t know what some of these things we are going to be working on are.

“But I feel that being involved in all these small things can actually make a big difference.

“I think we are discovering that as we go along. We are all quite new to this world.

“We’re getting ourselves involved in the everyday nitty-gritty of European Aquatics and I think that’s the key. We’re not here to be awkward – we are a group that wants to push the sport on.”

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics

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