Trends, Rollercoasters, and figuring out whether to ride them or design them.

Writing something that lives up to that title is truly going to be a challenge I can only hope to accomplish in this blog.
I have been in every part of the transition of Open Water Swimming from its eccentric pre-Olympic days to its now very serious and sobering adolescent stage.
What is it that made it become Olympic?  Or maybe a better question is: "Who made it Olympic?"
What are the things that were done in order to have gotten us to this point?
Assuming the 10k will remain in the Olympic Games, where will American medalists come from?
Are we riding the trends or designing them? Are we being pulled slowly behind their wake?  Are we a travel agency for our qualifiers?

With these questions in mind; where are we as a nation?

I thank the good 'ole boys of open water for granting me my guest pass to their club in the Beijing quadrenium, but if they don't actively open the doors to the clubhouse, we are going to continue on a riders path instead of that of the designer. My guest pass was only granted to me once my swimmer made a national team. So, in a sense, I had to be a designer to get to that point. Once there, I really did not have the desire to listen to very many of them as I perceived them as riders. Riders with a higher level of experience, but riders no less.  This may be more detrimental to our progress than inexperienced designers!

So, I'm going to do something I dislike as a reader: the dreaded abbreviation!
PR=Project Riders
PD=Project Designers
PH=Project Hybrids
PA=Project Authorities

The PR's are the ones that got in the door, but are only taking advantage of the progress of others or letting the masses assume that their previous involvement grants them a life pass.
The PD's are the ones that just keep pressing issues to be solved, hurdles to be overcome, identifying holes in the project and working to fill them with progress.
The PH's are the ones that got their ticket into the "circle" and did something with it and became designers.
The PA's are the "home office" personnel that give the masses their policies and rules.

Every one of these "P's" has a responsibility to the athletes and each other.  To the athletes: to keep pressing the sport to become more competitive through growth in numbers and quality of competitions offered.  More than anything, they must work the 3 parts of the USAS business plans' core objectives at the same time, not one at a time.
Build the base, Promote the sport, Achieve competitive success.

We are presently doing nothing in the United States to build the base within the scope of Open Water Swimming.  As far as promoting the sport, we have done a few things such as an interview or two with various players in the 10k.  In achieving competitive success; we are succeeding beyond our investment in a few areas, none of which are the Olympic distance in true world class events. 
This raises a challenge to all involved in two of the three areas of our business plans' core objectives.
Over the next two weeks, I will be examining the various challenges in front of us.