British Youth to be Tested in Coming Weeks

LONDON, June 28. A group of young British swimmers living and training in Australia will be able to put the good work of the past eight months to the test when they face the pinnacles of their swimming season over the next few weeks. Nine teenagers based at British Swimming's Offshore Center at the The Southport School in Queensland have returned to the UK following three arduous but rewarding terms of training coupled with academic work.

Five of the Southport group will be in action next week at the European Junior Championships in Mallorca, where Britain will be represented by a squad of 32, before they return to Sheffield for the ASA National and Youth Championships later in July. Meanwhile, the oldest of the Southport group, Chris Alderton (18) of Wear Valley, will make the transition to the senior European Championships (50m) after winning a bronze medal at the junior event last summer in the 1500m Freestyle.

It's an exciting time for the group, which has been under the guidance of former Portsmouth Northsea coach Chris Nesbit over the past year and this summer's events will be used to measure their development during that time. Adam Brown (Hatfield), Daniel Coombs (Gallica, Lancashire), David Waslin (Kingston on Hull), Grant Turner (Tigersharks, Swindon) and Marco Loughran (Guildford City) will compete in Mallorca from July 5-9 as part of a strong British contingent.

"I'm looking forward to seeing the swimmers in action in Mallorca," said Nesbit. "It has to be one of the best youth competitions in the world and always has a great atmosphere. "It's a good stepping stone to senior competitions as history shows us that Europe's best swimmers have been there at the European Juniors on the way through the system."

This summer's European events follow an impressive Australian Age Nationals in Sydney earlier this year where the British swimmers picked up a number of medals.

"The boys had a great championships with four gold medals, two silver and two bronze medals thanks to Alderton, Loughran and Chris Fox (Wolverhampton)," said Nesbit. "But performances from the all the boys, including Jamie Broom (Derventio, Derbyshire), and Richard Charlesworth (Hatfield), were impressive. They really did very well considering they were competing in the UK just days before, flew back to Australia and then faced competition in Sydney all within a short time frame."

The young swimmers have also been able to learn from their senior counterparts who visited Southport this year for the Commonwealth Games preparation camp. For a month the Southport swimmers were able to swim with and gain from the swimmers from the home nations and this will be repeated next year when Southport becomes the pre-event base ahead of the Worlds Championships in Melboune.

"It's been good to see the program move on over the past 12 months but there's still a lot of work that needs doing,” Nesbit said. “We have a great system in place at an outstanding facility but we need to make sure we have the right people there as well.”

While in Britain over the next few weeks, Nesbit will be hoping to meet with swimmers, parents and coaches who are interested in joining the Southport School.

"We need to make sure we continue to get talented athletes to Southport and we're in the middle of putting people in place for next year," said Nesbit. "We have four places on offer for the next school year which starts in January 2007. We'll be holding an open day on July 23 where swimmers, parents and coaches can come along to a session at Loughborough University to learn more about the school, the education system and swimming program in place."

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