Anderson & Hibbott Among British Swimmers Making NTC Moves

The delay in the 2020 Olympic Games has brought about changes with athletes’ schedules, training programs and overall approaches to ensure they’ll be ready for next July.

For several British swimmers, this means a change in venue, as the likes of Freya Anderson, Holly Hibbott and Jacob Peters are transitioning to new training bases for the leadup to next summer.

Longtime Ellesemere Titan Anderson, who took home 100m free/200m free gold at last year’s European Short Course Championships, is joining the British Swimming National Centre at Bath. The 19-year-old will be training with David McNulty, with whom Anderson has already been working under off and on the last year. McNulty is also to whom Olympian James Guy moved to last August.

Of her transition from Ellesmere coach Alan Bircher to McNulty, Anderson says, “I’m forever grateful for what Alan’s done with me and the programme at Ellesmere. It’s going to be sad as I’ve been there for five years, but I think it’s the right time to do it and have a new start.

“I’m really excited to get going in Bath and it’s a really good environment down there, with all the senior swimmers, which is something I’ve never had before as I’ve always trained at a junior level. The transition has felt really seamless; I went to Australia on the Bath camp, which was amazing. We spent three weeks out there in January/February time and then I’ve taken visits down to Bath to see myself on the underwater cameras and have a week training with the group, so I’m used to what it’s like down there already.”

Commonwealth Games medalist Holly Hibbott and double British champion Leah Crisp will also be making the move to Bath, while Peters and Brodie Williams will now be training under Jol Finck there as well.

As a reminder, British Swimming operates two national centres: the aforementioned National Centre for Swimming, Bath, based at the Sports Training Village at the University of Bath, as well as the National Centre for Swimming, Loughborough, based at Loughborough University.

McNulty represents the Lead National Coach of the former, with National Coach Jol Finck and Coach Intern Ben Reid also on staff. For the latter, Mel Marshall serves as Lead National Coach, flanked by National Coach Dave Hemmings and Support Coach Andrew Wallace.

Key features of the national centres include:

• 50m pool
• Provision of fully integrated daily training environment including 25 hours of dedicated pool training per week (60% water time is allocated to long course training).
• Selected to provide the best possible living environment conducive to high-performance training
• Aim to give support to athletes to ensure they achieve an ideal lifestyle/performance balance.
• Targeted athletes and coaches on the World Class Programme will be invited to attend both performance and sport science testing programmes.
• Regional hubs to educate elite coaches of the future

National Centre switches:

• Freya Anderson from Ellesmere to Bath NC (David McNulty)
• Leah Crisp from Leeds to Bath NC (David McNulty)
• Holly Hibbott from Stockport to Bath NC (David McNulty)
• Jacob Peters from Poole SC to Bath NC (Jol Finck)
• Brodie Williams from Millfield School to Bath NC (Jol Finck)
• Anna Hopkin from University of Arkansas to Loughborough NC (Mel Marshall)
• Charlie Hutchison from Ellesmere to Loughborough NC (Dave Hemmings)
• Cameron Kurle from Bath NC to University of Stirling (Steve Tigg)