Ken Wood (coach)

Ken Wood is a three-time Olympic Australian swimming coach, who has coached many Olympic and World Championship medal-winning swimmers over his 40-plus year career. He is the head coach at the Redcliffe Leagues Swimming Club at Redcliffe, Queensland, on the northern edge of Brisbane.

Biography

After the 2008 Summer Olympics, one of his students, Jessicah Schipper, left him after he sold her training program and methodology to Chinese swimmer Liu Zige, who defeated Schipper in the 200m Butterfly and broke Schipper's world record at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.^[1]

In recent years, Wood has trained Chinese swimming champions Liu Zige, Ye Shiwen and other Chinese National Team and Provincial team swimmers at his high performance centre.^[2] After Australia failed to win any individual gold medals in swimming at the 2012 London Olympics, Wood criticised the current swimmers, saying that they were "fat" compared to the Chinese swimmers, and criticised their "embarrassing" fixation on social media and treating the games like a "social gathering".^[3]^[4]

Notable students

Leisel Jones - coached from childhood through both the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens
Geoff Huegill - coached from age 12 through both the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens
Jessicah Schipper - coached from childhood through both the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing
Melissa Gorman - coached from early teens through both the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and 2012 Summer Olympics in London
Rebecca Creedy
Kylie Palmer
Kate Brookes-Peterson
Liu Zige
Ye Shiwen

References

External links

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