I'd like to share with you an extract from Ian Thorpe's recent Autobiography "This is Me". These are not the words of a coach but the words of one of history's greatest Swimmers who won 5 Olympic Gold Medals;
"The Olympic final that year [Sydney 2000] was another matter altogether. As I dived in, all I remember – apart from the noise in the stadium – is that the water felt cold and that I swam the first 50 metres probably a little too quickly, spurred by the excitement. If I look back at the race, which I'm sometimes forced to when making presentations…
I notice all sorts of little mistakes, like breathing as I came into the turns and lazy kicks off the wall…
They're both habits picked up at training – when you swim a ridiculous number of lengths day in day out, you tend to look for moments of rest…
The problem is when those bad habits creep in to the race itself."
…The moral of the story as I have tried to emphasise many times; do in training always, as you need to do in the race. Keep the skills constant throughout all our sets.
Keep up the Hard Work!!!
Kevin, Tom, Elysha, Josh & Mark
