During long leave, 11 Cranleigh students from IV form to LVI took part in the School’s first swimming training
camp in Tenerife. The team, led by Helen Merry and Will Philpot, set off from Gatwick Airport on Saturday 18th October and landed late Saturday night in Tenerife South. From Sunday to Friday, the team trained for 2 hours in the pool in the morning, 1 hour of land based exercise, and a further 2 hours in the pool in the afternoon. Most of the students were consuming large quantities of food; one student calculated that the average number of platefuls consumed by one student in the week was 63! The team trained hard in the world class facilities of T3, a multi-million pound complex hailed by national teams as ‘easily the best swimming training complex in Europe, and one of the top 3 worldwide!’ This was made even more evident when the team next to us were none other than the German youth national team.
Halfway through the week the team got to use an extremely rare but very valuable piece of equipment, the Flume
Channel. Costing around £1.8 million, this was an amazing opportunity to use one of the most advanced pieces of swimming technology in the world and everyone got something out of it. The benefit of the stationary swimming position allowed coaches and fellow teammates to assess technique and practice race speed with absolute ease.
Will Philpot commented: ‘Everybody worked extremely hard and huge improvements have been made not just in their swimming, but the team atmosphere is so much better. Everyone had an amazing time and it was a pleasure to coach in such prime conditions’.
The team comprised of Tom Berry, Tom Hickinbotham, Max FitzGerald, Rafe Scott, Taylor Seager-Green, Joe
Fulton, PJ Cunningham, Emma Grainger, Amber Magee, Natasha Gerrard and Abigail Sterry.
Will Philpot and Helen Merry
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