John West awarded Swimming New Zealand Life Membership

Auckland’s John West has been awarded Life Membership of Swimming New Zealand.

John has been involved with our sport for more than 40 years as a swimmer, administrator and official.

His journey in swimming began in 1970 when he joined the Hillcrest Amateur Swimming Club. Five years later he moved to Auckland’s Roskill club where he represented Auckland at various National and Regional Meets until 1980.

Whilst still a competitive swimmer John took an interest in the administrative side of the sport and between 1975 to 1992 held various roles at his club including as a member of the Junior Committee, Assistant Secretary, Coach, Chairman and Club President among other things.

From 1981 he also began to take on roles within their Regional Association including as a member of the Board, Team Manager, Member of the Auckland Technical Committee and President of ASA.

John’s tireless commitment to swimming has also seen him hold national positions as Regional Examiner, Member of the SNZ Technical Advisory Committee, Board Member of SNZ, President of SNZ and most recently as a SNZ Selector.

On the international stage, John is also well known. His first international role came in 1986 as a member of the Commonwealth Games Swimming Organisation Committee which lead to being the Timing and Results Manager for the same Games committee in 1987. On numerous occasions from 1998 he was the New Zealand delegate to the FINA Congress.

In 2009 he joined FINA’s Technical Open Water Swimming Committee where he continues his work today with responsibility for Rules and FINA’s development programmes for Open Water Technical Officials.

John is also an active official at international meets with his most recent role as Chief Referee for Open Water at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. In 2003 he was awarded a FINA Certificate of Merit for work at an International level.

The complete list of Swimming New Zealand Life Members can be found here.