Interview With Bill Sweetenham, National Performance Director of British Swimming

"The greatest fear I have when I coach an athlete is that one day they will look back and think: I could have done better," confesses Bill Sweetenham, voice bristling with a passion rarely found on sleepy weekday mornings in Loughborough. The 56-year-old Australian, who last November celebrated six successful - if often fractious - years in charge of British swimming, is speaking from experience; 35 years' worth of bitter experience.

Back in 1971, Sweetenham was in the shake-up for Australia's Olympic swimming team for Munich, but "gave up" - his words - to play rugby league. "I thought it was the best option because that was where all my mates were. But two of the guys who I swam with, and had beaten the year before, made the team. That's a tough thing to have to look back on."

The words are slower, more pained now. "You know, I've coached a medal winner at every Olympics since 1976, and every time I walk on the deck I have a sense of regret. At every Olympics I try to make it up ... but I'd give them all away today if I could relive '72."

Does it still drive him? "Passionately. There's not a morning when I don't wake up at 4am, wishing I was somewhere coaching. Because my love for swimming, coaching and success overrides everything else in my life."

That's no exaggeration. Sweetenham's philosophy is simple and undiluted. "For me, winning is the only option," he says bluntly. "I don't want to consider anything other than winning." That message is finally filtering through to Britain's swimmers, who won a record number of medals at the European Championships last August - an achievement Sweetenham suggests is a harbinger of things to come.

"I think the next six to 12 years will be a sensational period for British swimming," he says, name-checking Kirsty Balfour, David Davies and Fran Halsall. "We have never had such a stockpile of young talent, or depth of quality coaching. Our athletes don't just want to make the team, they want to make the podium.

"We're certainly ahead of schedule. And because of our talent-identification programme, we pretty much know who will be on the 2012 team now. Already we're putting resources behind them - nutrition, psychology, physiology, injury prevention, self-management skills - to make sure they improve."

This is the team that Bill has built, in his own image. So perhaps it's not surprising that he intimates, for the first time, that he may extend his contract, which runs out in 2008. "People have talked to me about staying until London 2012 to finish the job," he admits. "I haven't ruled that out, either as a full-time job or as a consultancy, although I may go back to Australia."

It's all a far cry from 2000, when Sweetenham gave up a stellar career back home to take over a British swimming team that had recently returned from the Sydney Olympics with no medals - their worst performance for 64 years - and a big reputation for being party animals. It was like the head of Eton deciding to tackle a failing inner-city comprehensive.

Why? "I always tell people you should never live in your comfort zone," explains Sweetenham. "I could have stayed in Australia, but Britain pursued me pretty aggressively and I wanted a challenge. I knew it was going to be tough - I just didn't realise how tough."

The lack of facilities were one problem, the work ethic quite another. "I was shocked to find a culture where athletes who had made the Olympic team would take two or three months off a year," he growls. "No other country in the world would consider that. Across the board, they trained 50 weeks."

Sweetenham yanked up the training volume, and a spike in performances soon followed. In eight world championships between 1973 and 1999, Britain had won only 18 medals - yet they took 15 in 2001 and 2003. But then came successive blips, in 2004 and 2005, and the critics closed in.

Karen Pickering, one of British swimming's grand dames, accused Sweetenham of "shouting at me until my eyes watered", while another veteran, Mark Foster, accused him of poor man-management and using outdated training methods. There were also accusations of bullying - of which Sweetenham was cleared earlier this year.

"Look, there are a few athletes who would consider me too tough," he says. "But those who were critical of me, every one of them, couldn't perform in the Olympic arena. The history is there. They competed in eight Olympics between them and the best was two sixth-placed finishes. So in that sense they are right: I was too tough for them, but the Olympics was too tough for them too."

Sweetenham is certainly a tough old bastard. You have to be to survive falling out of a minibus, nearly losing your leg in the process (even now he gets constant infections in his knee joint) as he did in 1983, or to leave your wife and family behind in Australia for 11 months of the year. But he's not the autocratic Aussie bruiser of caricature: there's warmth there, and a strange charisma too.

A case in point. He is talking about his learn-to-swim business back home, and how he looks to build pools in areas with families with young children. "You know, I found many of my top managers at a certain fast-food restaurant chain," he adds, a smile gentling his features. "They're the people who know how to market to kids.

"Every year when that company announced their manager of the year, I'd offer to double his salary if he came to work for me. It worked four times running, until the fifth year when they told me not to bother, because they'd just given their winner a huge pay rise. So instead I went for the guy who came second - and got him."

For now, of course, there are more pressing matters ahead. "In Beijing there's about nine events we have strong medal hopes in," he predicts. "London will be much better because we will have had another four years to develop. Our target there is to have at least one finalist in every event."

But will Sweetenham be on the deck come 2012, growling away? Don't bet against it. Certainly the easy life isn't for him. "I have no interest in sitting back and doing nothing," he says, conviction burned into his eyes. "I've seen too many of my friends try that and it hasn't turned out well."