As the bulk of the Australians withdrew from the International Swimming League (ISL) due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions, many will still be getting we this week in the form of virtual relay training time times.
Swimming Australia has unveiled virtual relay training time trials across the nation, with events taking place in Gold Coast (Bond University), Sydney (SOPAC), Adelaide (Marion) and Perth (HBF Stadium).
With athletes drafted onto official teams complete with entertaining names to the tune of the West Coast Wizards and Gold Coast Rockets and comprising a mix of traditional events and hybrid races, shades of the ISL are apparent in this new idea spanning October 22nd through October 26th.
Swimming Australia National Head Coach Rohan Taylor said of this virtual relay series of events,
“Firstly, this is a great chance to bring our athletes and coaches together for race practise, foster engagement and ignite the competitive nature of everyone,” he said.
“Providing constraints-based training challenges like this allows the athletes to practise skills in a situation different to their usual daily performance environment.
“Most importantly, this is a fantastic opportunity for our athletes in a challenging year, I know everyone is looking forward to putting their skills on the line and experiencing race pressure.”
“There are seven relay medals on offer in Tokyo, so they are an incredibly important part of our preparation for next year,” said Taylor.
“This activity will allow us to collect data, have that data assessed and then take the results back to their home programs to assist in their next block of work.”
The top 8 fastest splits in each race will be given special recognition.
We will publish the relay rosters as quickly as they are revealed to us.
Dates
Sydney – October 22
Gold Coast – October 23
Adelaide – October 23
Perth – October 26
Relay teams and coaches
Adelaide Anacondas – Peter Bishop
West Coast Wizards – Mick Palfrey/Will Scott
Sydney Sharks – Simon Cusack/Adam Kable
Gold Coast Rockets – Michael Bohl/Chris Nesbit/Richard Scarce
Brisbane Braves – Vince Raleigh/Damian Jones
Brisbane Bisons – Dean Boxall/Chris Mooney/David Lush
Events
4x200m Freestyle (Men)
4x200m Freestyle (Women)
4x50m Medley (Men)
4x50m Medley (Women)
4x100m Freestyle (Men)
4x100m Freestyle (Women)
4x100m Medley (Mixed)
4x50m Freestyle (Men)
4x50m Freestyle (Women)
3x100m Medley (Men)
3x100m Medley (Women)
I haven’t seen any more mention of this and Sydney was supposed to happen today.
Meet Mobile have posted times but these have changed throughout the day as times are sorted and teams continue to compete. There have been plenty of standard swims as would be expected while Swimmers continue to train. The stand outs at this stage would be Madi Wilson in multiple events, kaylee McKeown in the 100 back and Elijah Winnington in the 200 free.
I had looked for it on Meet Mobile but couldn’t find it but I had another look after your comment and got it now. Cheers.
I wouldn’t bother with meet mobile – times were wrong, had people swimming that didn’t swim and times for swimmers in races they didn’t even swim in.
Yeah, I noticed it’s a bit of a mess.
Australia looks like being opened up internally as normal within a month (border to NZ already open) – there were only 5 cases I think yesterday (excluding incoming arrivals in quarantine). That should help normalize swimming a again.
25% of West Australians want t o secede they’ve liked being closed so much .
Cool. We’ve managed to hit 70,000 cases a day here in the Third World States of America.
3x100m medley??
No freestyle