Meares 'shocked' by Dolphins coach's pro-Korea comments

  • 2 months ago
Dolphins coach Michael Palfrey faces sanctions from Swimming Australia after expressing his support for a South Korean rival to beat Aussie 400m freestylers Sam Short and Elijah Winnington.

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Transcript
00:00Like a lot of people it was a surprise and a shock and my first thoughts went to the athletes and the welfare of the athletes.
00:08And what I can say is the collaboration that I've been able to have with Swimming Australia has been really positive.
00:14Will Michael be sent home and did the AOC look into some of the accusations against him in the past?
00:20From an AOC perspective we won't be stepping in over the top of Swimming Australia.
00:24We'll be working with them and any decision that they make we will support.
00:28At the moment we have not been able to speak to the athletes.
00:32It was quite late last night and I did not want them woken up.
00:36As you can understand and appreciate I left quite early to be here so I didn't want to again wake them up early.
00:42And so we want them to be able to have the process to go through their training session before Rowan is able to sit down and speak with them.
00:50And then once that feedback is received Rowan will make that decision and we will support any decision that Swimming Australia on behalf of Rowan as head coach will make.
00:58Yes allegations in the past were made but from what I understand were looked into and no further process was required to follow on.
01:08I think it's fair to appreciate the conversation is confidential at this stage so I can't reiterate what was actually said.
01:15But what I can say is that he is very aware and very sorry for what has occurred.

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