The Nunawading Swimming Club located in Victoria, Australia has announced that Jol Finck has been appointed as the Director of Coaching. Finck will be joining the squad in his new role officially as of January 2022.
Originally from Melbourne, Finck is returning to Australia after having served in significant coaching roles within the British Swimming organization. He served as the Director of Swimming at Millfield School from 2008 to 2017 before moving on to coaching at the national High-Performance Centre in Bath.
One of Finck’s most successful swimmers, James Guy, moved to Bath along with Finck, under whom he took the 2015 world title in the men’s 200m freestyle, followed by 2 silver medals in the British relays at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
In 2019 Guy stayed at Bath but moved from Finck to Dave McNulty as his coach, citing the fact that he felt he needed a change before the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Finck has served on British Swimming coaching staffs at multiple Commonwealth Games, European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games.
He has University degrees in Education and Science and is a graduate of the UK Sport Elite Coaching Apprenticeship program.
According to Nunawading’s appointment, Finck’s coaching philosophy is to ‘stand on the performance edge, to work at being his best self and to go for the win’.
The current head coach of Swimming Australia, Rohan Taylor was a past coach of Nunawading while 2020 Olympians Brendon Smith and Matt Temple both hail from the club. Smith was a somewhat surprising bronze medalist in the 400m IM in his Olympic debut at 21 years of age.
Finck is replacing Wayne Lawes who will become the Head Coach for the state of Victoria, another role Taylor also was in prior to his national team head coach appointment.
You can view more about Finck’s announcement below.
Really enjoyed his episode with Brett Hawke. He seems like a guy with a sense of humor who loves to coach!
This is a really huge loss for British Swimming. I’m sure there will be a lot of coaches looking at the possibility of taking over his training group.