As promised when we launched our Forum newsletter for subscribers a couple of weeks back, athlete welfare will be one of the themes we'll be focussing on.

In this Forum, we take a quick peek at the themes Shane Gould covers in her new book "Sports Career Transition", the Banksy-style cover of which provides a stark reminder of the risk athletes, their families and coaches takes if performance preparation fails to incorporate preparation for the rest of life when the lights go off at the end of racing days:

A full review of Dr. Gould's work will follow in March when we launch our books section, with picks historic and new, mine and those of subscribers and others.

Having read most of Shane's book, it's not hard to recommend wholeheartedly her guidance to any and all of you out there, athletes, parents, coaches and any others guiding and/or working with athletes.

In this Forum, we take a peek at the champion Aussie's wisdom and then consider the story of Elaine Tanner, Canadian three-times medal winner in the pool at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, the relevant words of Mike Wenden at those same Games after he picked up his second gold and had to be saved from drowning and then, below that...

• our Timeline looks at World records broken in the last week in February throughout history and focusses on the void filled by the Aussie summer, Dawn Fraser, John Konrads, Stephen Holland - and Shane Gould - all swim pioneers in the month of February Down Under when much of the rest of the world was preparing to meet the Australians at big events chiefly held in 'northern summertime'.
• our History of Swimming 100 series, with a suit and the champion of women's rights who wore it, both on our lists of objects and people heading to the director's cut in the SOS library.