Australia Training in Canet (Without Cam McEvoy) Before Olympic Pre-Staging Camp in Chartres
By Riley Overend on SwimSwam
Forty of the 41 Australian swimmers who were selected for the Paris Olympics later this month are midway through a training and acclimatizing block in Canet, France, before they gather in Chartres on July 13 for an Olympic pre-staging camp.
While most of the Aussie squad has already assembled at the Arlette Franco Swimming Centre, which hosts one of the three Mare Nostrum Tour stops every summer, Cam McEvoy is back home at the Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) with coach Tim Lane for a couple more days. Australia’s head coach, Rohan Taylor, made an exception for McEvoy to join his team in Canet on Sunday to accommodate his unique approach to sprint training in a 25-meter pool with measuring equipment.
“They felt the disruption to his training off the back of trials, with travel and adaptation with jet lag, would potentially slow him down and be a risk for them,” Taylor said. “He needs the standardized equipment like the KPASS block (Kistler force-instrumented starting block) at the QAS to measure and really help him progress through his stages of preparation.
“It was better for him to stay and continue his prep because he’s training so specifically and uses such specific stuff, like the indoor pool, the cameras, the blocks, and the resources the QAS have,” Taylor added. “He trains uniquely this way and no one else really does… so I felt like I was happy to support that.”
McEvoy is the fourth-fastest 50 freestyler of all time courtesy of his personal-best 21.06 from his world title last summer. He became the first Aussie man to qualify for four Olympics with his 50 free victory at Trials last month in 21.35. The oldest Australian swimmer headed to Paris (by just one day ahead of Bronte Campbell), the 30-year-old McEvoy fired off a world-leading 21.13 in prelims of February’s World Championships before ultimately settling for the silver medal in 21.45.
“My job is to support that performance,” Taylor said. “It’s that fine balance between not letting it be a free-for-all. We think it’s the right thing.”
McEvoy is aiming to become the first Aussie man to win an Olympic medal of any color in the 50 free. Ashley Callus came closest in 2008 with a 4th-place finish. After taking away from the sport following the Tokyo Olympics and finding new hobbies such as weightlifting and rock climbing, he has returned even stronger in the second stage of his career despite taking on less total meters swimming in the pool.
“I’ve done 10 sub-21.5 times since Trials last year,” McEvoy said. “Prior to this, I had only gone under that once in my entire career.
McEvoy said his approach to training and tapering for big races is inspired by the British speed cycling team.
“I’ve got a couple more weeks where we’ll suit up and do a lot of race replication and just get adapted to these new speeds that I’ve hit all year,” McEvoy said. “All year I was 21.8. Now I’m low 21. I’ll just get as much volume of that under my belt as I can, fly over to France, then rest off the back of that. I got the concept from the UK speed cycling team. They tapered it into a mock event, hit personal bests for the first time, and then that exposure to those PBs they adapted to, tapered off the back of that, and then got that extra 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 per cent [gain].”
Meanwhile, 18-year-old Olivia Wunsch is balancing schoolwork with swimming at her first Olympic training camp in Canet. She punched her ticket to Paris with a personal-best 53.17 100 free that placed 5th at last month’s Trials.
“I want to do well at school and I want to do well at the Games… it’s a juggle but a good juggle,” Wunsch said. “My school have been super supportive and the coaches are great… it’s just about time management.”
The pool swimming portion of the Paris Olympics begins on July 27, two weeks after the Aussie Olympic pre-staging gets underway in Chartres.
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