Wales CG team prepare in Mallorca

Best of luck to the Wales Commonwealth Games team who have just finished a week of preparation at the BEST Centre. The team will head to Qatar later this month for their final preparation on their way into New Delhi.

Special congratulations to Danielle Stirrat, who has been a regular on our Family Swim Holidays for the last 5 years and who has now broken through to the senior ranks with her selection to the Commonwealth team. Danielle is a European junior champion and will compete in the 200m and 400m free, and the two freestyle relays.

We wish Danielle and the team the best of luck.

Triathlon legend Normann Stadler is rounding off a 3 week training camp at the BEST Centre, Colonia Sant Jordi as he prepares for the Hawaii Ironman. Two time Hawaii champion and multiple Ironman winner Stadler is up early each morning in the pool before heading out on Mallorca’s excellent cycling roads on his bike or running in Colonia Sant Jordi’s beautiful surrounding areas.

Along with Stadler is five time Austria Ironman winner Marino Vanhoenacker from Belgium. Vanhoenacker set the fourth fastest Ironman time in history earlier this year with a stunning 7.52.05.

The Spanish national team have once again chosen to base themselves at the BEST Centre in Mallorca as they make their final preparations for the European championships in Budapest.

Among the team here are European gold medal hopefuls backstroker Aschwin Wilderboer and medley and fly specialist Mieira Belmonte. Others looking to do well in Budapest include double European Junior champion Marina Garcia.

After a successful transition to short course and then into a synchro pool, the staff at the BEST centre turned the 10 lane 50m pool into a water polo field for the German squad today, as the team complete their final preparations ahead of the European championships in Budapest.

The Centre will play host to a women’s invitational tournament in September this year, and will look to stage more synchro and water polo events in the coming years.

Belgian club Brabant East Swim Team are having a successful training camp at the Bluewater Elite Swim Training Centre. We have the BEST at BEST!

The German national water polo team started their preparation for the European Championships in Budapest with a long swim session at the BEST Centre today. Next week the pool will be changing into a water polo facility with the Germans training on a full size water polo pitch.

The BEST Centre is 1 year old today! The team is celebrating in style with plenty of local food being sampled by the Norwegian, Swedish, Luxemburg and Belgian teams training at the centre, with the coaches knocking back a little local Cava.

Congratulations on a great first year! It is the start of an amazing journey.

Adreas Raelert wins in Frankfurt

Congratulations to Andreas Raelert who won the European Championship Ironman in Frankfurt. Andreas, who spent most of March training at the BEST Centre with the German national triathlon team, is now preparing for Hawaii with hopes of winning there as well. The Frankfurt Ironman is widely considered the most important Ironman after Hawaii.

We look forward to welcoming Andreas and the rest of the team back to the BEST Centre in Mallorca next spring. Well done Andreas!

Family Swim Holiday regular is honoured at Plymouth College

Congratulations to Laura Froshaug who has just been made Head Girl at Plymouth College. Laura, who has been with us every year on our Family Swim Holidays, had just returned from work experience at the BEST Centre, to find out the excellent news.

It is a great honour for Laura to be chosen for this role at such a great school, and we all very proud of her.

1500m challenge: Two of the local Mallorcan distance swimmers, Victor Goicochea and Alex de Celis, from the Balearic elite squad came to the BEST Centre with coach Fernando Gomez Reino to train with top Chinese 1500m man Dai Jun and 200m star Jiang Hi Qi.

Shanghai coach David Lyles took them for a race pace set that saw Dai Jun get down to 53 sec from a push on the last 100 of a set of 20 high quality 100s and going 23.7 sec for his last 50.

Impressive stuff from a 1500m swimmer!