N.Z. swimmer bound for Alabama

Press, 21 April 1984, Page 64

N.Z. swimmer bound for Alabama

By

KEVIN TUTTY

Michael Davidson, one of the six swimmers nominated for the New Zealand Olympic swimming team, has signed a scholarship to join the University of Alabama in September. Davidson will join one of the leading university swimming squads in the United States, and come under the guidance of Mr Don Gambril, one of the world’s most accomplished coaches.

Mr Gambril arrived in Christchurch last evening for a sports medicine conference in the city on Monday and Tuesday, and a series of lectures at the New Zealand Swimming Coaches Association annual conference today and tomorrow.

The chief coach of the United States swimming team for the Los Angeles Olympics, Mr Gambril said that only yesterday he had signed papers with Davidson’s parents in Auckland finalising the scholarship. Mr Gambril’s university swimming squad at Alabama has a budget of $250,000 a year. The money is provided by the support for the university’s football (gridiron) team. It is one of the top college teams in the country.

The football team is a financial bonanza for the university. Next season it has seven home games. Four of those will be played in a 78,000 seat stadium and three in a 62,000 seat stadium.

Seats are $l5 each but every seat has already been sold said Mr Gambril “and

the money is in the bank earning interest.”

Last season the team had four games televised and each game earned the university another $450,000 in television fees. Mr Gambril was appointed chief coach of the U.S. Olympic swimming team two years ago, and since then he has attended major competitions and assisted with the swimmers’ motivation. “I have shown them films of recent Olympics and talked to the swimmers about sports heroes, such as Mark Spitz, John Nabor, and the 1976 women’s relay team which beat the East Germans. “Most of the swimmers in the 1984 team would have been very young in 1976, and haven’t had the experience of an Olympic competition.” Mr Gambril did say that a large number of the illfated 1980 Olympic team are still swimming and in contention for places in this year’s team. (The United States boycotted the last Olympics in Moscow.) “We will be looking for good results this year as the home country. It has been shown in the past that home teams always perform well.”

“We hope to be the most dominant country in swimming at Los Angeles but whether our women’s team can beat the East Germans is difficult to say. In the men’s competition there is no particular country which is a threat. There has been a world-wide improvement in men’s swimming.”