‘Hard pool conditions will suit SA’
COMMONWEALTH Games swimmers will feel the temperamental weather at the open-air pool at the Gold Coast‚ but veteran Cameron van der Burgh said that could suit the South Africans.
The SA squad‚ which has been acclimatising in the Queensland resort for more than a week, got a taste of the type of tough conditions that once put the brakes on American great Michael Phelps.
“We were swimming there the other night and it was raining and a little bit windy so it was actually quite good to get used to what that felt like because I’ve never experienced that before‚” Erin Gallagher said at the athletes’ village yesterday.
“Apparently it can get quite windy at the pool. Graham [Hill‚ the national coach] was telling me that Michael Phelps was in this pool once and it was so windy that swimming into the wind I think he put two seconds onto his 50 [metre] split.”
The Gold Coast has ranged from hot to pouring in the past few days‚ but Van der Burgh insisted that the tougher the conditions‚ the better.
“The Brits and the Aussies are used to pristine conditions, but obviously in South Africa we don’t have a worldclass facility,” he said.
“For us the outdoor plays a lot in our favour. [If] it rains‚ even better for us. We just brush it off.
“A lot of the other guys start to freak out a little bit and mentally it’s not as easy for them.”
Van der Burgh‚ the 2012 Olympic 100m champion and former world record-holder who is also a two-time Games champion in the 50m breaststroke‚ spent most of his career training outdoors. So have most of South Africa’s swimmers, including Gallagher and Ayrton Sweeney‚ one of the country’s few poolside medal hopes outside of Van der Burgh and Chad Le Clos.
“We train outdoors‚ so we’re used to the open air and the sun and rain in our eyes,” Sweeney‚ who will compete in his premier 400m individual medley as well as the 200m breaststroke and 200m IM, said.
Van der Burgh said the training facilities at home had contributed to the success of SA swimmers.
“I’ve never heard a South African go to a world championships and say ‘that wasn’t a great pool‚ it was a slow pool‚ it was a this pool‚ a that pool’‚ where a lot of the other internationals‚ you always hear them saying that they didn’t enjoy the facilities or it wasn’t that great,” he said.