Swimming star Mel helps club to start new season in Olympic style

11:50am Friday 5th September 2008

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CITY of Hereford Swimming Club have kicked off their new season in Olympic style.

British Olympic Swim Squad and freestyle relay team member Mel Marshall put the youngsters from the club through their paces on Sunday.

It was a double celebration for Hereford SC as the club received accreditation under the British Swimming Club Mark SWIM21 in August.

Marshall became England’s most prolific woman competitor at a single Commonwealth Games in 2006, winning six medals and overtaking the record of June Croft, Karen Pickering and Karen Legg. She was also a member of the 2003 World Championship silver medal winning 4x100m relay squad, and Athens 2004 Team GB relay squad which finished 6th.

She had only stepped off the plane from Beijing earlier in the week and came straight up to Hereford from the wedding of fellow international swimmer Katy Sexton.

She spent three hours on Sunday afternoon drilling the club’s up-and-coming young athletes and stretching them with top level starts and turns practice, a mini-Olympic circuit training set in the pool, followed by some fun relay challenges.

The 50 swimmers, aged from eight upwards, had to tug of war (two swimmers tied together and swimming apart), kick off (push against each other using a float to see who has the strongest kick), chain swim (a bit like a team cycle race where swimmers take it in turns to lead the pack) as well as undertake “gold” and “silver” standard kick and swim sets.

“The swimmers were clearly putting their all into the sets I could see quite a few red faces,” said Marshall.

Those swimmers who completed the exercises with maximum effort or good technical delivery were rewarded with hand-outs of Olympic hats, costumes and shirts.

The session finished with some innovative relays one where the swimmers had to wear a shirt which was passed from swimmer to swimmer after each leg, another where each swimmer had to complete one or two lengths of the pool without getting a hat wet.

At the end of the session, and following a dry land training session organised through Halo, the swimmers had a chance to meet and talk to Marshall, get their kit autographed, look at her medals and have photographs taken alongside her.

The club would like to acknowledge ASDA for part-funding the event and continuing to provide support for local events such as these.

At the same time the City of Hereford Swimming Club was pleased to announce its accreditation as a Swim21 club at Skill Development level.

Swim21 is recognised by Sport England’s Club Mark and demonstrates that the club is run in a proper and safe manner and provides a good level of quality in its training and development of young athletes.

“It was an enormous privilege to have Mel agree to present the award so soon after the Olympics, and was really the icing on the cake and a great reward for the best part of 18 months work in preparing and submitting the application,” said Andy Boucher, the club’s Swim21 co-ordinator.

“We acknowledge that this is in some ways just the beginning and will form the foundations for the club to move from strength to strength.

“I would also like to mention the great support we had from West Midland Swimming’s regional Development Officer Debbie Dean and the Hereford and Worcester Sports Partnership.”