Swim England Talent Pathway

The revamped Talent Pathway now gives a clear route for development for swimmers aged from 11 years to international level. 

Swim England Talent Pathway Booklet

At the starting point counties have been asked to run training camps for 11 year olds working on stroke development.  Devon, Dorset, Gloucester and Somerset were able to get these camps up and running this year with Cornwall and Wiltshire planning to join in 2018.

Regions were tasked with running camps for 12 year olds focussing on starts, turns and finishes. In the South West  thirty six swimmers (18 girls & 18 boys) were selected from rankings. The camps, which will all be held at Oxley Leisure Centre in Sherborne, Dorset, will be a mixture of pool work, pre and post pool exercises, land training and talks.

The first Regional camp took place on 16th July and covered front crawl and butterfly with an emphasis on land work with specific exercises. Future camps will cover nutrition and psychology as well as the starts, turn and finishes of other strokes.

The next stage of development is known as Phase 1 where a smaller cohort of swimmers will be invited. These camps, which will be run by Swim England, will be a mixture of swimmers from more than one region and will be held in various parts of the country.

Phase 2 includes an overseas camp and is followed by Phase 3 and 2024 – all of which are England programmes and lead into British Swimming’s World Class Podium Potential and then World Class Podium.

Some swimmers may follow a path right through from bottom to top but many others dip in and out or even start part way up as all develop at different rates..

This year’s 36 selected swimmers for the Regional camps are as follows -