British out of their depth

The last time that British swimmers failed to bring back a medal from the Olympics was in 1936 when the Berlin Games became a propaganda weapon for Nazi ideology. But another medal-free games for our swimmers became a stark possibility last night after Britain's strongest night in the pool failed to deliver.

Stephen Parry's time of 1min 57.01sec in the final of the 200m butterfly would have won him a silver medal in Atlanta. That was four years ago. In Sydney, it left him no better than sixth.

"We are improving all the time, but the world is not waiting for us," Parry said. "We are forever playing catch-up."

His coach Dave Callejo insisted that Parry at the age of 23 was still the best butterfly swimmer in the world.

Parry trained in Florida for the past four years while gaining a business degree. His British record in Indianapolis in March, when he defeated the American world-record holder Tom Malchow, identified him as Britain's best prospect in Sydney. But last night it was Malchow who took gold, punching the air with such glowering aggression that he seemed to sprout three days' growth in an instant and was probably identified by Hollywood as the next Charles Bronson.

"I came to Sydney fourth in the world and hoped to improve on that," said Parry, a muscular Liverpudlian. "I was well placed coming out of 150 but then it didn't happen. It hasn't happened for us in Sydney, but we have good young swimmers coming up and they must use my time - and the times of all our best swimmers - as targets to surpass."

Paul Palmer's solitary silver in Atlanta is beginning to look like riches, with Palmer's own chance of a medal in Sydney disappearing last night when the 4x200m relay team finished fifth, more than 5sec adrift of Australia's world record.

Britain were third at the start of the last leg but even though Jamie Salter - one British swimmer to have raised his game here - swam a creditable 1min 47.27sec he saw two 200m medallists surge past him: the Dutch world-record holder, Pieter van den Hoogenband and the Italian, Massimiliano Rosolino. There was no humiliation in that.

The world had the rise of Adolf Hitler and the impending second world war to worry about when Britain fared so badly in Berlin. Robert Leivers was our only male finalist and the shortcomings of the women were overshadowed by the antics of Eleanor Holm, a backstroke gold medallist four years earlier, who was unceremoniously dropped from the US team after getting drunk with journalists on the boat over.

Holm responded by becoming a Berlin party girl, reporting back that "Goering was fun" and that "the one with a club foot" had a lovely personality. She was referring to Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda.

Holm eventually went home to play Jane in Tarzan's Revenge, and not everyone cheered when Tarzan rescued her from the crocodiles.

Not for the first time, a propaganda war is about to be fought over the failures of British swimming. The knee-jerk response will ignore the improvements made since Atlanta, both in facilities and funding. A more accurate response would be to recognise a more professional outlook, but to wonder whether Britain, with its cool climate and polluted coastline, can ever hope to gain more than the occasional medal.

Callejo, who coached James Hickman to seventh in Atlanta in the 200m butterfly, sounded lugubrious last night after watching Parry improve only one place on that. "If I carry on, I should have a world champion by 2020," he observed wryly before appealing to the British public to "keep the faith".

Parry, the coach insisted, would prove himself a winner. Next year's world championships in Japan will be the first test of that.

"I know he is 23 but, in terms of racing experience, he still has a lot to learn," he said. "He is the best butterfly swimmer in the world and he will win a medal in Athens in four years' time. He will do a great job for British swimming in the future.

"We have moved on, but the world is not going to wait for us. We are getting more people into finals than ever before. The standard is rising.

"But it is not going to happen in the next four years - it will be eight or 12 years from now. Australia took 12 years to reach the top of the world. To assume that we can do it in half the time is arrogant."