Late last week, at the 2014 Jose Finkel Trophy, Brazilian news reported that Nicholas Santos, in January, would head to the United States to train with Brett Hawke at Auburn until the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
As it turns out, he’s not the only swimmer on the move in what seems to be a never-ending carousel of coaching changes in Brazilian swimming.
SporTV’s Blog do Coach has listed several changes, the most noteworthy of which is World Record holder Cesar Cielo.
- Cesar Cielo will return to Arizona to train with Scott Goodrich, with whom he had worked for some time prior, in Scottsdale. He will bring with him Henry Martins and Felipe Martins, plus Minas Tenis assistant Dellano Cesar, and the group will train together until late November. At that point, they will return to Minas Tenis.
- Felipe Lima, who had been training in Florida, will head to Auburn to train with Brett Hawke. There he will be along with Bruno Fratus and the aforementioned Dos Santos.
- Henrique Barbosa is heading to Great Britain to train at the University of Bath with Michael Jamieson – the Olympic silver medalist in the 200 breaststroke, which is Barbosa’s best event.
- Tales Cerdeira is planning to find a new training program, but hasn’t exactly nailed down where that is.
The most interesting of these moves, in my mind, is that of Barbosa to Bath. After a wildly successful summer from all across the country, Great Britain is the “hot nation” in swimming, especially in the breaststrokes. Barbosa may not be the last swimmer to head to the UK for training, where there’s an increasing level of domestic competition and an above-average infrastructure for those wishing to train and get an education at the same time.
Though Jamieson wasn’t Britain’s most impressive breaststroker this summer, he is the Olympic silver medalist, and is joined in the group by Britain’s top backstroker Chris Walker-Hebborn and 18-year old Siobhan-Marie O’Connor, who won 6 medals representing England at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
One more, The rising sprinter Fernanda Delgado (25,7 50 free at 14 years (2013) old still did not swim for “real” at 2014) is going to Plymouth school to train under John Rudd..
It seems like the high profile Brazilian swimmers have very little confidence in Brazilian coaches.
JMHO.
The 2 best coaches in BRA will not train the individual athletes more because they are now the National Team coach.. so they would need new coaches anyway.. and Volkers (of Minas Tenis) is not very spring oriented.. so for Cielo while the structure is good.. the program would not be 100% focused.
The other reasons are due to tranqulity to train.. Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte are 2 big cities.. where they would have a lot of distractions..