As Great Britain continues to unwind and debrief from their Olympic performance, the National system has lost one of its brightest coaches in Ben Titley, who has spent the last 16 years at Loughborough University and the Loughborough ITC: Britain’s most successful training squad to date.
He will now come to Canada to head-up their National Training Center in Toronto, Ontario, a move that comes both as a career choice and to be closer to his wife’s family in Canada.
Among Titley’s accomplishments include twice acting as the Head Women’s Coach at the Olympics (2004 and 2008), and a third time on the staff in 2012; coaching 6 World Championship squads; and 4 Commonwealth Games squads.
The number of elite athletes who have gone through his system in those 16 years can’t be counted with finders and toes combined, but among them include defending 50m backstroke World Champion Liam Tancock, Fran Halsall, Lizzie Simmonds, Caitlin McClatchey, Kate Haywood, and the underheralded James Gibson, who in 2003 was the first British male World Champion in 28 years.
Needless to say, losing Titley was not in the rebound plans after the Brits scored only 3 Olympic medals.
This is the second major coach that the Brits are losing after the Olympics, as Dennis Pursely has moved back to the U.S. to take over the head coaching job at his alma mater, the University of Alabama.
British swimming wished him luck, but hesitated to name an immediate successor. They said that the decision would be made both on the outcome of their Olympic performance debrief, as well as their desire to bring in an uber-elite international coach to head a specific sprint training center.
Titley will take over the Toronto High Performance Swimming Centre at the University of Toronto, that was established in 2009. Swimmers in this centre include 2012 Olympian Zsofia Balazs.
what a great get for Canada!