ONE of the major sporting casualties of COVID-19 last year was the short course swimming season, which was lost in its entirety during restrictions.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
That's made the Bathurst Swim Club all the more keen to get their indoor campaigns back under this weekend at the Orange Aquatic Centre.
The meeting acts as a chance for swimmers to produce qualifying times for the Country Short Course Championships and State Age Short Course Championships in late winter.
Bathurst Swim Club head coach Josh Stapley said it will be great for the team to experience an indoor carnival after a long wait.
"I really like the indoor season because it's a little more relaxed. While we don't get an off-season in swimming this is as close as we get because we don't have a national age event for short course," he said.
"There's not as much pressure going onto our guys, and even more so this weekend because this is our first short course event since 2019. Even will be going in on slow qualifying times and everyone's going to be seeded incorrectly, which takes even more of the pressure off."
While new qualifying times would obviously be a great achievement at the upcoming carnival Stapley said the main aim for the weekend is to try and get club members peaking at the right time of the season.
"We already have quite a number of swimmers who are qualified. The Country Champs are the first ones up at the end of June and we have 27 swimmers qualified off their long course times already," he said.
"That's awesome for us because that's already a big team and we'll be looking to add a few more to that this weekend.
"We can hopefully validate some times over the short course so some of our swimmers won't have to use their long course times for qualifying.
"It's a meet that we're looking to do well at, but we've only just started our new training bloc so it's a little bit more of a tester. We'll look to the Mountains and Plains Championships next month to really hit home for those times."
The first race starts from Saturday at 2pm.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content:
- Bookmark www.westernadvocate.com.au
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram
- Follow us on Google News