Haines has witnessed more than 50 years of swimming history, and often been an important part of it. by Cecil M. Colwin, "Swimnews"Magazine , formerly "Swim Canada" magazine. Article originally appeared in "Swim Canada" magazine, May 1996, and also in "Swimming Dynamics" (1999) published by McGraw Hill.

George Haines is one of history's great swimming coaches. He is also one of the most popular coaches who ever trod a pool deck.

Haines likes people, and it's easy to see that people like him too. It's not surprising that he attracted swimmers from every point of the compass. Not only did he draw them in, but he made many of them great. In fact, he has had more swimmers inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame than any other coach.

Haines took the pressures of top-level coaching in his stride. Throughout a long career, he remained relaxed, outgoing, good-natured, and free of hang-ups. While Haines kept firm discipline in his teams, he never lost his sense of humour.

His swimmers were relaxed and confident, just like their charismatic coach. They sported one of the cleverest 'T' shirt slogans that I ever saw. It said a lot in two words : "By George!" It also meant 'best in the world.'

It was commonplace to see a Santa Clara swimmer step to the starting block, look over at George, and give a wink. George would smile and wink back. Then the race would start, and yet another 'By George' product was on the way to a championship medal, or perhaps another world record.

Nowadays, Haines has become one of swimming's most entertaining and beguiling raconteurs. To hear him talk about "impact people" is something to remember. He talks about other great coaches, great swimmers, their achievements, and the lessons he learned from them.

Not for him the intellectualizing, or the now customary buzz-words about 'blood lactates' and the like. Instead, Haines speaks with the natural quiet authority of a great intuitive coach who has done it all. Haines' stories, told in the flat, flinty tones of his native mid-West, are tinged with wry humour and a sharp eye for human foibles.

Early Influences
Haines has witnessed over 50 years of modern swimming history, and often been an important part of it. The Haines saga started in Huntington, in northeast central Indiana, where Haines was born. As a schoolboy there, he came under the spell of Glen Hummer, coach-mentor at the local Y.M.C.A. "He was a great, great man," says Haines: " His techniques were ahead of the time. When Hummer died, I felt as if an arm had been cut off."

There is an interesting parallel here with the early history of Haines' great contemporary, "Doc" Counsilman. Two of the most successful swimming coaches of the 20th century were inspired by outstanding mentors at the local "Y".

In Counsilman's case it was Ernst Vornbrock, coach at the down-town YMCA in St Louis, Missouri, who turned Counsilman's life around during the Great Depression and set him on the road to success. Glen Hummer and Ernst Vornbrock were two of a kind, and American swimming owes much to their indirect influence.

Even before he became a swimming coach, Haines learned the value of a good early distance background, because Glen Hummer first trained him to be a 1500 swimmer. (Haines was later to become the conference champion in the 50 freestyle at San Jose State College in California, a big drop from swimming the1500!)

Peter Daland tells a little-known story about George Haines' early years: "When George got out of the service in 1946, he hadn't swum for three years, and was badly out of shape when he got back into training at the Huntington 'Y'. "

"Glen Hummer took George to a meet at the Indianapolis Athletic Club, and
said : 'It will be good training for you to swim the mile'...to which George replied: 'Yeah right'."

"Matt Mann had brought his Michigan swimmers to this meet, because competition was restricted just after the war had ended, and people had to search far and wide to find competition. "And so it turned out that George found himself swimming in the same meet as the mighty Michigan swimmers."

"After George finished the 1500, and was climbing out of the pool, Matt Mann called him over, and said: 'Young man, you have a marvellous stroke. You have excellent technique.' And George was smiling, and feeling pretty good. Matt Mann continued: 'But there's one problem..." George said: 'What's that?' Matt said: 'You swim in the same place too long.' "

When reminded of this story, George laughs and says: "Matt Mann was a great guy. I loved Matt Mann, and Bob Kiphuth, they were both great gentlemen."

Ann Curtis and Charlie Sava
During the war Haines joined the Coast Guard, and was stationed in San Francisco. His was billeted in a barracks that had once been the Simmons Mattress Company's shipping and receiving depot. Haines said: "I was there three years. I saw guys going out to the South Pacific, and they would come back three years later, and say: "Are you still here?"

"I taught survival training to people who were going overseas at Crystal Plunge Pool...for the Navy, the Marines, as well as the Merchant Marines. I ran the program with a great U.S. swimmer by the name of Fred Taoli who was in the Navy."

Haines described how Ann Curtis, America's first great post-war swimmer, trained at Crystal Plunge under Charlie Sava. Haines said : "I thought Sava had unbelievable talent. He was the first coach I saw using wall pulleys."Charlie Sava took regular wall pulleys and placed them alongside the pool. Haines said: "He had the number of pounds painted on the weights, and then he attached one end of a tether to the weights, and the other end to a belt around Ann Curtis' waist. She swam against the tether for what seemed like hours."

Tethered swimming, in Haines' opinion, is nothing new. "Doc Counsilman once showed me a book, written in the 1800's that had a couple of paragraphs on tethered swimming. It's just another case of 'what goes around, comes around'."

"Charlie Sava and Ann Curtis were great "impact people" in the 40's, and, of course, at the first post-war Olympic Games in London, Ann Curtis won gold medals and anchored the winning freestyle relay team."

Tom Haynie and Charlie Walker
Haines said that, in the 1950's, we learned a great deal about rest and taper from the Australians. About the same time, Haines met a good swimmer by the name of Tom Haynie who swam for the University of Michigan.

"He was a great freestyler" said Haines, "but a kind of a wild character, and he didn't become as good as he could have been. Later he coached at Stanford and I can remember a clinic that he gave at San Jose State in 1952 where he talked about streamlining the crawl by rolling the body on its long axis."

Haines said that he was so impressed that he asked Haynie why he didn't write a book, and he said: "No, I'm too busy coaching." I asked George Haines the same question. Haines smiled and said: " Guess, I've also been too busy coaching and never found enough time."

"What I'm saying is that certain people make impacts on you as a coach, and as a swimmer. I used to listen to Charlie Walker my coach at college, and then we used to take our teams up to Stanford, and have dual meets with them - later Jim Gaughran was the coach there and so on - but, at that time, Tom Haynie was an impact coach to me. I learned a lot from the man about freestyle....'get your hands under the body, roll the body on its long axis...your hips control the roll...."

Haines said that he still had the paper that Haynie presented at the 1952 clinic. "It's in my box in the garage, where everything else is. But I can still remember him talking about that."

Chris von Saltza
"One of the great American impact swimmers, after the 1940's, was Chris von Saltza, and I had the good fortune to coach Chris from the time she came to Santa Clara for a try-out in December, 1955. In June of 1956 she broke the American record by about 9 seconds in the 500 yards freestyle."

At the Olympic Trials for Melbourne, Haines said that Chris von Saltza was 12 years old, and pushing off the last turn in the 400 metres, she was coming second. "At the 475, I thought: 'Good gosh! She is going to make the team!' But I really didn't want her to. But, anyway, she dropped back to 5th place as the bigger and older girls went by her. She came 5th. She was 12 years old."

Haines said that Chris' father, Dr von Saltza, came up to him, pulled him behind the bleachers, and said with a sigh: "Oh man! Am I glad she didn't make the team."

Haines added: "You know why? We thought it would have been too easy. She didn't start swimming until December, 1955, and here she was nearly making the Olympic team in August or late September of 1956 to go to Australia."

" So we were both praying that she wasn't going to make it. I was glad to hear her father say it too. He said it first. He was also a great person."

"So she didn't make the team, but she continued to develop and became one heck of a swimmer", said Haines. He claimed that von Saltza would have been great in any era of swimming. "She was about 5'10" or 5'11", weighed about 140 pounds...I wouldn't want to say she was about 140 pounds today...she'd probably punch me", quipped Haines. " I see her once in a while. she lives in Sacramento. If she was swimming today, she would be right there with the big guys."

Haines said that Chris von Saltza had great technique, the desire, everything..."She had good body roll. She kept her hands under her body as she pulled. She was fantastic."

Value of Rest
In 1959, Chris von Saltza was the first American girl to break 5 minutes for the 400 metres. The Australian and world record was 4:46+ held by Lorraine Crapp. Said Haines: "We learned about rest and taper from the Australians, but I also learned something about rest from an incident in Chris von Saltza's career, and I'll tell you about it in a moment."

Haines said that the idea of shaving down was introduced by the Australians, and they kept it a big secret over there. "They wouldn't tell anybody about it, and they waxed us. Not only were they better swimmers but they had the little edge of shaving. They were the first group to do it.."

Haines described how, when von Saltza came down with a bad case of ptomaine poisoning at the 1960 Olympic trials in Detroit, she had inadvertently taught him the value of rest. "She came down with this bad case of poisoning, four days before the meet, and I thought: My gosh! She's never going to be able to do it."

"We put her in a room by herself, and she stayed in bed for two to three days, and finally brought the fever down. Her Dad, who was a doctor, showed up, and he knew a doctor in Detroit who came out to the hotel, and took care of her. But she wasn't in the water for three days...never got out of bed. We fed her, and that was it. She'd just go back to sleep."

Haines described how von Saltza, after being sick in bed, and only having had the chance of loosening up the day before, said: "I want to do a dive 50 just to see how I feel, to see if I have any strength."

Haines said: "I think she did her best time or something, and here I am, giving her heck, because I think she's burning herself out. Prior to the meet, Chris had done 4:53+ for the 400, but the next day she went 4:44.5 and broke the world record. And, so I prayed from then on, that everybody would get sick when we go to the nationals, and we could put them to bed to rest for a few days...It's true that you learn more from great athletes than you ever teach them."

Steve Clark and Matt Biondi
On the subject of men freestyle swimmers, Haines said that Steve Clark was one of the great impact swimmers he had trained. "Steve Clark started swimming in Los altos when he was 8 or 9 years old. He came to Santa Clara, and he and another guy, Eddie Townsend, both had to stand close together to make a shadow in the high sun, they were so damned skinny."

Later, Steve went to Yale, where he swam a new American 100 yards record of 46.7 seconds in the NCAA's.

Yale's Payne Whitney Exhibition Pool was like the Taj Mahal of swimming. It seated 1,500 people in plush seats around an elevated amphitheatre that circled the pool. More world records were broken in it than anywhere else. It was here that Bob Kiphuth, the great Yale coach, reigned like a demi-god. He protected every aspect of the pool as if it was a holy shrine.

Haines said: "The first time I ever visited there was when I was a young coach. I started to step out on to the pool deck. I was wearing my regular street shoes, and I heard Kiphuth shout: 'Hey kid! Go back and get a pair of rubbers.' I said: 'Yes, sir! Yes, sir!' and went back and put rubbers on.' "

"But the worst thing you could do was to go from the pool deck to the amphitheatre by climbing over the bannisters. This set Kiphuth into a terrible rage", said Haines. "Anyway, when Steve heard that he had broken Jeff Farrell's American record of :48.4, he was so excited that he forgot the rules. Up he goes, over the bannisters, to where his mother was sitting."

"She was knitting, for gosh sake!... maybe it was crocheting! 'Hey Mom', Steve calls: 'I went 46.7'. His Mom says: 'Is that good, Steve?' Steve had the perfect parents, let me tell you!" added Haines.

Haines classifies Matt Biondi as "one of the great impact swimmers, and a real Hall of Famer."

"Matt went 41.8 for the 100 yards. He still holds the record. The reason he went 41,8, and the reason he went his 48.4 world record for 100 metres in Korea, was that the guy was training overdistance; he was training for the 500, he was training for the 200, he even swam the 500 in dual meets, and he was our greatest 200 swimmer. But, as soon as he stopped training for the 200, and the overdistance, he never ever, even in the 50, swam as fast again."

"He never swam 48.4 again because he quit training for the 200, and it was really sad for me to watch the Olympic Games in 1992, and to see that our best 200 guy, with 1:36.2 or 1:37, whatever it was, wasn't on our relay. He didn't swim the 200 so he couldn't qualify. But Matt was a great impact swimmer for our sprinters."

Schollander, Spitz, Saari and Roth
Haines talked about two other impact sprinters, Don Schollander and Mark Spitz, both of whom he had trained. "Don was a great worker in practice. Let's say, for example, that we were going into the hard part of the season...I think we were going 15 x 200, and we were going 5 sets of three, descend the first three, and the first 200 in the next three had to be as fast as the second 200 in the first set, and then they had to descend that set, and they had to keep going, and they got down to 14."

"Spitz and Schollander were not exactly what I would call 'We'll go out and have a beer together types'. Schollander would be in one lane, and Spitz would end up in his lane and drag on him. He was the greatest drag swimmer of all time. Schollander didn't like that one bit. Neither did he cherish the thought that this young swimmer was going to knock his socks off if he hung around long enough."

Schollander was the first swimmer in the world to break 2 minutes for the 200 metres freestyle. He brought the time down to 1:54.7. (NICK IS THIS THE EXACT TIME?PLEASE CHECK YOUR RECORDS. )For four years, Schollander remained the only swimmer in the world to break 2 minutes for the 200. Said Haines: "Remember, nobody else was breaking 2 minutes, not in the U.S., not anywhere."

For many years, making the American men's Olympic 800 relay team was the toughest task in the world. Haines said: "To make that team, a swimmer had to shave. Don Schollander made the 1964 team without shaving. He was the last person to make the team without shaving. Don did not shave until his first event in Tokyo.

Even the great Roy Saari, along with all the other guys, had to shave to make the team, but then you must remember that he had been ill and was hard put to it. He made the relay but he had to shave to do it, and then, with the 400 I.M. and the 1500 coming up later, I think it took a little bit of the edge off him.

"In the 400 I.M., Saari was swimming a pretty good guy by the name of Dick Roth. Roth had a big attack of appendicitis at the Tokyo Olympics, and he was hospitalized. The hospital said they wouldn't release him. Well, when we got there, he was actually going down the hall, hopping on one leg, getting his pants on to get the hell out of there. He was scared because they had told him that they were going to operate on him. And, when we did get him back home from Japan, the next day his family doctor took him in and took his appendix out right away. That's how bad it was."

Mike Burton
"Back in the 30's Buster Crabbe, Jack Medica, and Ralph Flanagan were unbelievable. George Breen was one of our first real impact swimmers over the distances. This guy didn't start swimming until he was in college, and he broke the world 1500 record in our Olympic Trials in 1956, I think, and then again in the heats of the1500 in the Melbourne Olympics. But then, of course, Australia's Murray Rose bombed everyone over there in the finals."

Haines said : "Brian Goodell in Montreal, 1976, and di Carlo in Los Angeles, 1984 (???? CORRECT, NICK?) were uncanny in the distances...But, before them, there was Mike Burton, maybe the toughest guy who ever pulled on a Speedo."

"Burton won the 1500 in Mexico City, and 3 or 4 days before the 400, he and a couple of other guys became violently ill. When we were riding back and forth from the Olympic village to the pool, we kept seeing a sign, "Chucky's Pizza", or something like that, and the swimmers kept saying: 'Gee!, we ought to get off the bus and get a pizza.' I said: 'You guys get off to get a pizza, you're not going to swim in the meet. Don't get off. I don't want to catch you!'"

Haines continued: "So, one day, I wasn't on the bus, and they got off...and, on that day the elevators in the Olympic Village weren't working, and we had to carry Mike Burton down four flights of stairs, and take him to the infirmary where they fed him intravenously for about three days. Then he snapped out of it, and he just managed to qualify 7th for the finals. He just barely made it in...5/10ths of a second more, and he would have been a spectator."

Just before the final of the 400, Burton asked Haines what time he thought it would take to win, and Haines replied: "Ralph Hutton says he's going to go 4:11.0". Burton said: "Well, I'm going 4:09.0 tonight."

Haines said: "Well, that's what Burton did;he went 4:09.0 - exactly! And, of course, he won. Not great by today's standards...and, of course, it's all relevant...but he won. Then, in the 1500, Burton won in world and Olympic records."

Talking about the American trials for the 1972 Munich Olympics, Haines said: " Burton was in an outside lane in the heat of the 1500 metres trial, and when I looked over to where he was swimming, there were about 20 or 30 people, coaches, swimmers and parents running along the pool deck, yelling for Mike Burton to qualify. Then he made the team and went to Munich. That guy was unbelievable!"

Quick 'Psych-Up'
"The reason I say that Burton was one of the toughest guys in the 1972 Olympics, is that he was not swimming well there until we got to the 1500. In Munich there was the great fiasco of Rick de Mont's disqualication. Just before he walked out on the pool deck to swim the event, Burton found out that de Mont was not going going to be swimming the 1500 that night. Actually, Burton and de Mont heard the news at the same time."

"They had disqualified de Mont because of the fiasco in the 400, and why he got disqualified was that he had asthma and had taken an over-the-counter medicine called 'marex', and it might have been more of a medicinal thing than a performance-enhancing drug, but it was on the banned list, and so he got knocked out of the 400, and lost his gold medal to the Australian swimmer."

Haines said that Burton had only about two minutes in which to gather himself for his new role as favourite. "I don't think Burton was the favourite to win, but by the time he found out about it in the ready room, and went out on the pool deck, Burton got himself together and swam one of his great races. As a matter of fact, he was in such great possession of that race, that, about half way through, he allowed the Australian swimmer to go ahead of him, and got on the guy's hip."

"The other swimmer didn't move over, and so Burton stayed right there with the guy until about the last 150, and then he tumbled and got away from him and won the race. Burton was the first 1500 swimmer in history to win back-to-back 1500's in the Olympic Games. Of course, Vladimir Salnikov, the great Russian swimmer, has done it three times. I consider these guys to be impact swimmers."

Haines cited more great impact swimmers. "Donna de Varona was one, Claudia Kolb, of course, was another. Claudia was one of the toughest swimmers of all time. And then there was Mark Spitz...a lot of people remember him for his 100 and 200 fly, but he could swim every distance from 100 to 1500. Many people don't know that, or don't remember that he swam in a meet one day in torrential rain over at San Leandro, a junior college school. At about 300, I stood up and called: 'Am I the only guy here who knows this guy is breaking the world record?' "

Haines said "Then everybody started to take notice. Nobody was watching because the rain was pouring down on them. Mark broke the world record in the 400. And later that summer, on the way to the mile, he set world records in the 800 and the 1500. Of course, they didn't stand for long, because later in the nationals, Mike Burton annihilated these times, but, nevertheless, I mention this to show that Spitz was also able to break world records over the longer distances. Spitzs' background of aerobic , overdistance training prepared him for the 100 and 200 distances."

Importance of Overdistance
Haines said that he had always been an advocate of aerobic training, overdistance training. "The reason that Spitz, Clarke, Schollander, and all these guys were able to do what they did, was because they had a background in overdistance training. And, if you go through the history of swimming, and you look at the great 100 metres champions, you'll learn that practically all of them were great 200 and 400 swimmers."

"Johnny Weissmuller was 400 metres American champion, and he was the 100 champion. Wally Ris, who won the 100 in the 1948 London Olympics, was a great 200 swimmer, although you don't read much about him swimming 200 - but he trained for the 200. The great Australian swimmers all dropped down from the 400, 200 to the 100...and these guys were impact swimmers. Although Janet Evans' times are plateaued now at a higher level than her world's best, she is undoubtedly one of the great impact swimmers in history."

Haines said that another girl that he had the "good fortune to coach" was Keena Rothammer, one of the few swimmers to have beaten the great Shane Gould of Australia. "Shane won the 400 in Munich, and Keena, I think, was 3rd or 4th...I don't even know if she got a medal. But, when she got through, she came up to me and said: 'George, I'm going to win the 800.' I said; 'I think you can, Keena.' I had my tongue in my cheek, you know, because here she's going to be racing Shane Gould..."

Haines related how Keena Rothammer swam "one of the greatest negative-split races, maybe of all time...up to that point, anyway, because her second 400 was about 1/2 a second faster than her first 400, and she won in new World and Olympic record times. Her time was about 8:55, not great compared with today, but it was good then."

Subdued Kicking
Haines said that Keena Rothammer had an unusually powerful kick. He described how he tried to get her to subdue her kick, to make it more relaxed, and to teach her how to use it only when she had to. Don Schollander
also had a very powerful kick. "That guy could break a minute for 100 yards on the kick board. We had to subdue his kick," said Haines. "A lot of 6-beat crawl swimmers have a tendency to overkick. When you see swimmers turn blue around the lips and back of their shoulders, the first thing you ask is: 'Are they in condition? Are they overkicking? Are they holding their breath on the way out?".
Haines said that swimmers such as Schollander, Keena Rothammer, and Chris von Saltza, all of whom had a powerful kick, had to learn to subdue their kick, and make sure they were breathing properly, and with the right pattern."

Haines pointed to Australia's Kieren Perkins as a great impact swimmer. "He is a perfect example of a guy who can kick, and use his legs throughout the 1500, as well as in a straight 400 swim. But he subdues his legs and is able to change from a little bit of a 4-beat kick into a 6-beat. All leg-talented swimmers have to be able to do that. Perkins is one of the great ones, and must be a tremendous trainer."

"The guy is unbelievable" says Haines, as he bestows on Kieren Perkins an accolade he reserves for only the greatest of the great.