George Bovell III

Gi­ant rocks have been thrown in­to small stag­nant in­signif­i­cant pools of wa­ter. Waves of im­mense en­er­gy and in­spi­ra­tion were cre­at­ed this past week from the im­pact of throw­ing six Olympic medals, 11 World Cham­pi­onship medals, and ten world records in­to our lo­cal swim­ming pools and com­mu­ni­ty with the third an­nu­al GB Dive In Free Swim Clin­ics.

Even now, un­fore­seen, far reach­ing, small­er rip­ples of pos­i­tive en­er­gy are spread­ing out across the en­tire sur­face, and will no doubt touch count­less lives. This is what we need in this coun­try, and thanks to At­lantic, SporTT and Oa­sis Wa­ter we were able to once again make this hap­pen.

As I walked in­to Blue Dol­phins swim club, our old­est and best kept pool, where I train, I glanced as I al­ways do at the plaque ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Joey Kauf­mann, the man in­di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for my suc­cess. He is cred­it­ed with be­ing the founder of lo­cal swim­ming, who built the pool in 1962 and even coached my fa­ther to Sports­man of the Year in 1969. I smiled to my­self, know­ing sure­ly that he would be look­ing down favourably on one of his rip­ples, that what was about to cre­ate oth­er waves over the next three and a half hours in his cre­ation.

Wait­ing for Roland Schoe­man, Arkady Vy­atchanin, Moss Burmester and my­self at each venue were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 young par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pet­i­tive swim­mers, their fam­i­lies and oth­ers who came just to lis­ten, learn and watch for free. It must have been a sight to be­hold, these tall, vis­it­ing liv­ing leg­ends of the sport in world class shape. We gath­ered every­one to­geth­er and as we in­tro­duced our­selves. I would joke that they should be tired of hear­ing what I had to say af­ter the past clin­ics, so I brought to them mas­ters of the sport that I want­ed to learn from. I let the oth­er hosts do most of the talk­ing as they gave in­spir­ing sto­ries of the back­grounds, the way they viewed and ap­proached chal­lenges, and how they were able to reach the lofty heights they at­tained.

The Russ­ian, Arkady Vy­atchanin's sto­ry was par­tic­u­lar­ly cap­ti­vat­ing. The cur­rent world record hold­er and dou­ble Olympic medal­ist ex­plained how he came from a tiny coal min­ing town in the far north of Rus­sia, Vorku­ta, above the Arc­tic Cir­cle in the Ko­mi Re­pub­lic.

It helped to put things in per­spec­tive as be­hind him, our six lane pool sun bathed pool seemed lux­u­ri­ous as he re­count­ed how he trained in a dark four lane in­door 25m pool in the USSR. It was ob­vi­ous that he must have been an in­cred­i­bly tough, re­silient and de­ter­mined young swim­mer and his suc­cess was a tes­ta­ment to his abil­i­ty to dream. No less in­spir­ing were the sto­ries from New Zealand's world cham­pi­on Moss Burmester and South African Olympic gold medal­ist Roland Schoe­man. Even I felt ca­pa­ble of any­thing and was deeply in­spired as we all moved on to the next phase of the clin­ic.

Next, we led the young swim­mers through a dy­nam­ic dry land warm up as we demon­strat­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty, mo­bil­i­ty and strength ex­er­cis­es and ex­plained why we do them and how they di­rect­ly have a pos­i­tive im­pact in our swim­ming.

n Con­tin­ues on Page A32

Some of the con­cepts must have been sure­ly known by the swim­mers but it nev­er hurts to have them dri­ven home first hand by the best swim­mers in the world.

Af­ter every­one was warm and loose we jumped right in­to things, lit­er­al­ly. We each took turns ex­plain­ing, demon­strat­ing and coach­ing the as­pects of the sport that we were renowned for, while the oth­er hosts pro­vid­ed feed­back from the deck above. Com­mon mis­takes were ex­plained and ad­dressed.

Per­fect tech­nique was demon­strat­ed in slow mo­tion, and then again at race pace, of­ten times to the cheers of the im­pressed watch­ing swim­mers on the pool deck above. I know from ex­pe­ri­ence that some­times these things can't be ex­plained but need to be pa­tient­ly shown a few times. Imag­ine be­ing a young swim­mer in the pool next to, and learn­ing first hand from the World Cham­pi­on or cur­rent world record hold­er in your event! I was so im­pressed with how ea­ger every­one was to learn and it was es­pe­cial­ly re­ward­ing to see the changes be­ing in­stant­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

We fol­lowed up the tech­ni­cal por­tion of the clin­ics with a valu­able ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion. In ad­di­tion to re­ceiv­ing shirts, swim­ming gog­gles and caps, the par­tic­i­pants were giv­en note­books and pens. The note­books proved in­valu­able as it al­lowed every­one to record the over­whelm­ing amount of in­for­ma­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence that was freely dis­persed re­gard­ing psy­chol­o­gy, goal set­ting, nu­tri­tion, tech­nique, and re­cov­ery, among oth­er things. Each of us then did a re­cap of all the tech­ni­cal points we had ad­dressed ear­li­er. Af­ter­wards, of course every­one got a pho­to and an au­to­graph.

The truth is that there is a lim­it to how much swim­ming we can teach in three swim clin­ics, we can on­ly hope to give the young lo­cal swim­mers the tools, but they have to be im­ple­ment­ed dai­ly. How­ev­er the in­spi­ra­tion and re­al­i­sa­tion that any­thing is pos­si­ble through hard work can last a life­time. My hope is that some of the swim­mers we worked with will be fu­ture Olympic medal­ists and world record hold­ers that will one day, like me, be a medi­um through which Joey Kauf­mann's rip­ples of pos­i­tive en­er­gy will con­tin­ue to reach and move oth­ers to un­fore­seen great­ness down the road.

Fol­low George on Twit­ter: @george­bovell