Leading distance swimmers in special training camp

New Zealand’s leading endurance swimmers, led by Commonwealth Games medallist Gareth Kean, are in a special training camp in Auckland this week.

Twenty-two of the country’s best long distance and endurance swimmers and their coaches are part of the Swimming New Zealand camp under the direction of High Performance Centre coach Mark Regan.

“The idea is to focus on the specific skills and requirements needed to develop our long distance swimmers across all the disciplines including pool and open water swimmers,” said Swimming New Zealand’s Philip Rush.

The camp is headed by Regan, formerly head coach at the Australian Institute for Sport and also coaches Denmark’s Lotte Friis to a Beijing Olympic medal in the 800m freestyle in his role as coach of the Danish national squad.

The camp has an exhaustive training week with 11 training sessions, six fitness and weights sessions with Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance Centre strength and conditioning staff and special underwater filming for technique correction and testing with the HPC sports science staff.

“Many of these swimmers are in small programmes or on their own. This is a fantastic opportunity for them to feed off each other, get some best practice testing and coaching and it’s also a chance for our top coaches in this area to work together and learn from Mark.”

Commonwealth Games swimmers in the camp include Natalie Wiegersma, Glenn Snyders, Amaka Gessler, Tash Hind and Kean with recent national open water champion Cara Baker also attending.

The camp concludes on Saturday.

The camp participants include: Natalie Wiegersma, Lisa Pankhurst (Invercargill), Lisa Catto (Gore), Phoebe Williams, Matt Hutchins (Christchurch), Natasha Lloyd (Kaiapoi), Carsten Corrazza (Counties Manukau), Bianca Rowley, Alannah Jury (North Shore), Gareth Kean, Samantha Lucie-Smith, Brett Newell, Matt Woodrow, Emma Robinson (Wellington), Glenn Snyders, Carl O’Donnell, Tash Hind, Amaka Gessler (High Performance Centre); Cara Baker, Dylan Dunlop-Barrett (Gold Coast).

Coaches: Mark Regan (HPC), Jeremy Duncan, Gary Hurring, Brigitte Mahan, Mathew Woofe, Gennadiy Labara, Philip Rush (SNZ).