Author: Ben Ramsden

Many thanks to Brandon, Leanne, Tim, Emily and Swimming Australia for these photos.

Congratulations team Abbotsleigh! Full report here.

Our 2015 National Age campaign has officially kicked off. Olympian John Farrow inspired, educated and emotionally moved the team during his presentation to the team. Our swimmers then did their best to eat the mountain of breakfast provided for them at Matt’s place. Remarkably there were still left-overs at the end – great job parents!

Leanne and Brandon delivered a pre-competition briefing that rivalled John’s talk for impact. A memory jogger of the key themes filled inboxes later in the day. Inspirational quotes were then carefully written on to the beautifully illustrated canvas produced by unofficial team artist Tash.

Such is the size of our squad this year that we have outgrown the Abbotsleigh bus for the pre-trip to sopac to feel the water and collect accreditation passes.

Go Abbotsleigh! Photos will be posted here as they are received.

National swimmers, their parents and siblings were educated and entertained my a highly motivating talk from Olympian John Farrow today.

John is a winter Olympian in the very scary sport of Skeleton. He told his amazing story of being “a naturally talented but lazy athlete” who excelled in Athletics, Rugby and then International Mountain Biking before converting to Skeleton.

He drew multiple parallels between the Swimming and Skeleton sports as he skilfully told his story alongside teaching key techniques to successfully perform at the highest level. DIY prosthetics, jellyfish and fast cars all featured in his engaging tale of success and resilience.

We were truly privileged to host John. Personally I was amazed at the number of different take-aways that audience members were excitedly discussing afterwards. We look forward to watching John in future.

Considering the amount of One Direction that Brandon endured in the car on the way to Homebush, he was remarkably happy. Raf and Tim most probably weren’t listening to Abba (who?) in the bus. Regardless of the musical entertainment on the way, the excitement really kicked in when 40 Abbotsleigh swimmers and their parents arrived to cheer along Australian swimming stars at the National Open Swimming Championships.

First up, Magnussen vs. McEvoy in a brief and massive surge of fast moving white water, more commonly known as the mens 50m freestyle. The Campbell sisters did their thing, Gina Rinehart did hers (not swimming); and Chris our pres was on duty for TV interviews, medal presentations and feeding his girls their dinner.

This was no ordinary visit to SOPAC. Many thanks for all those that put together an exciting and memorable night.

The just released current season swimming rankings reflect many great results for our Club swimmers. Leanne and Brandon’s hard work, commitment and motivational skills aligned with the swimmers solid work ethic has resulted in many outstanding achievements.

Congratulations to all swimmers on your outstanding results against the best age swimmers in Australia.

See the PDF file here which lists the Abbotsleigh swimmers position in the top 25 national long course rankings.

Well done to all! Abbotsleigh is on the march.

Note: a new ‘National Rankings’ page has been added to the website under ‘Information’ to allow easy future reference.