Blog - Will Any of Our Baby Swimmers Make it to the National Squad?

The wonderful Rebecca Adlington OBE winning Gold at the Beijing Olympics

My I-Phone has spent a week recovering from constantly being picked up and logged into Twitter for a full seven days.  The reason?  It was the British Gas National Swimming Championships in Manchester.  

As well as following ‘British Swimming’ on Twitter, I was also following some great swimmers, past and present, who were involved in the championships, either competing or commentating/reporting.  These included Rebecca Adlington, Keri-Anne Payne, Liam Tancock, Steven Parry and Karen Pickering.   All kept me up to date with results, dramas and new faces to watch out for. 

Many of the swimmers are already household names thanks to their success in the 2008 Olympics and the 2010 Commonwealth Games.  The likes of Keri-Anne Payne, Rebecca Adlington, Francesca Halsall, Ellen Gandy, Gemma Spofforth, Elizabeth Simmonds, Ross Davenport, Simon Burnett, James Goddard, Liam Tancock, David Davies and many more. 

But it’s the new blood starting to come through that gets me excited.  Some are babies (well, compared to me!) but at 15 and 16 years of age they are swimming against these superstars and in some cases, keeping up and even beating them! 

And of course they all started somewhere.  Whether it was with school lessons, local recreation or private swimming clubs. Rebecca Adlington started swimming at the age of seven and just look at her now.  She is Great Britain’s most successful Olympic swimmer in 100 years!!   

Age seven... this is what excites me.  At Puddle Ducks some of our swimmers have been with us since they were a few weeks old.  By the time they reach Dabblers at the age of three or four they are already swimming 5m, 10m and 25m and more importantly they are doing it the Puddle Ducks way, with style and grace.  We hope this will prove to stand them in good stead for lifetime of swimming - and just perhaps - competetive swimming too.

With this background, this amazing start in the water, do we have some potential Rebecca Adlington’s and Liam Tancock’s out there?  Possibly so!  What a proud moment it would be for the teachers at Puddle Ducks if one of our swimmers appeared on the starting blocks in one of these great competitions in the future. 

I look forward to that day and only hope you remember us (and keep us informed of your successes) at Puddle Ducks - because this is where it all started! 

Posted: Monday, 21st March 2011 by Ali
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