With Ben Titley now overseas leading the Canadian National Training Center at Toronto, the Loughborough ITC in Great Britain, one of the country’s premier training groups, is in search of a new head coach. For now, that coach will be Kevin Renshaw, the organization announced yesterday.
Though this role, still just on an interim basis, is new for Renshaw, his presence in Loughborough is not. He has been with the program since 2005, focusing on their distance group. He is the coach who led David Davies to the Olympic silver medal in 2008 in the 10km swim, Joanne Jackson to silver medals in bot the 400 and 800 freestyles at the 2009 World Championships, and then Daniel Fogg and 400 IM’er Roberto Pavoni to the 2012 Games in London.
Renshaw, who is an engineer by trade, was caught up in some controversy in the leadup to the Olympics. Davies’ new coach (and old coach until 2007), Dave Haller at Cardiff, accused Renshaw of overtraining the aging star. Though Davies found open water success under Renshaw, he had much more luck in the pool prior to their time together, including bronze medals at the World Championships in the 1500 in both 2005 and 2007. After returning to Haller in 2010, Davies was pulled from the 2011 World Championships due to fatigue, something Haller blamed on his time training with Renshaw.
Though it’s hard to say whether or not that is accurate, it does give some insight into Renshaw’s training philosophy, which seems to be very high-volume.
