A club that trains outdoors all year has reached the final for the first time.
When the swimmers of Calder Lido Swimming Club arrive for training at six o’clock on a November morning, the first thing they do is check the thermometer bolted to the side of the pool. On Tuesday it read 9.4C. Nobody blinked. By ten past six, twenty-two teenagers were churning up and down the fifty-metre outdoor pool beneath floodlights, steam rising off the water into the dark.
On Saturday, at the regional championships at the Harrow Moor aquatics centre, that hardiness paid off. The club’s under-18 mixed relay squad finished second in the 4x100m medley, qualifying for the national club finals for the first time in its 74-year history. Their time of 4min 08.31sec was more than three seconds faster than their previous best and just 0.6 seconds behind the winners, Port Selwyn Dolphins, a club with an indoor training base and nearly four times as many members.
A race decided on the final leg
The race itself was tight from the start. Backstroker Niamh Corrigan-Wells, 16, turned in fourth after the opening leg, before breaststroker Elias Okonjo, 17, moved the squad up to third with a powerful second length. Butterfly swimmer Tamsin Hewer, the youngest of the four at 15, held that position against a strong field. That left the anchor leg to Rafael Kincaid, 17, who dived in roughly a body length behind the Ardle Otters in second. Kincaid closed the gap over the first fifty metres and touched ahead by 0.14 seconds, setting off celebrations among the forty or so Lido parents and swimmers packed into one corner of the stands.
“I didn’t look at the board until I heard the noise,” said Rafael Kincaid. “Then I saw our name in second and just went under the water again because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Kincaid, who has trained at the lido since he was eight, said the cold had become a strange kind of advantage. “When you’ve swum in nine degrees in the dark, a warm indoor pool with an audience feels like a holiday,” he said.
Training outdoors, all year round
The Calder Lido, a 1930s open-air pool on the edge of Ardle Park, was saved from closure by a community campaign twelve years ago and is now run by a charitable trust. The pool is heated only lightly in winter, typically to between 9C and 14C, to keep running costs down. The club has no indoor water time of its own, and its swimmers train outside in every month of the year, including through snow.
Head coach Yvette Marchbanks, a former county swimmer who has led the club for nine years, admits that the conditions have sometimes made recruitment difficult. Some talented young swimmers have left for indoor clubs. But those who stay, she says, develop a particular kind of resilience. “We can’t do the long technical sessions an indoor club can, because the children would get too cold standing still,” she said. “So we keep them moving, we work on fitness and racing, and we make the most of the summer. What we’ve found is that the ones who stay learn to race hard and not to complain. That counts for a lot at the end of a relay.”
The club has 87 members, and its committee is entirely volunteer-run. Parents take turns at the poolside before dawn, ferrying hot drinks and towels and keeping an eye on swimmers for signs of cold. A converted shipping container beside the pool serves as a changing room, equipped with a small heater and, since last year, a donated hot shower.
The road to the final
The national club finals take place in February at a 50-metre indoor pool on the far side of the country. The club estimates that sending the relay squad, two reserves and two coaches will cost around £3,200 in travel, accommodation and entry fees, and has launched a fundraising drive with a swimathon at the lido on the first Saturday of December. Supporters are invited to swim, or simply to stand on the side in a warm coat and donate.
Marchbanks says the squad will not be overawed. “We’re not going there to make up the numbers,” she said. “These four have shown they can race anyone. And whatever happens, they’ll be the only team in the final who’ve trained through a frost.”
