The water is boiling at Auburn in the States right now - and things are about to get even hotter when sprint emperor Cesar Cielo gets home from home next Monday.
On the deck, coach Brett Hawke has his hands, eyes and mind full. In the water a shoal of speedsters gathered for the hunt:
The visitors:
- Filippo Magnini (ITA)
- Christian Galenda (ITA)
- Luca Dotto (ITA)
- Andrea Rolla (ITA)
(On tour in the States as the Italian sprint relay team)
The Auburn crew
- George Bovell (TRI)
- Jacob Andkjaer (DEN)
- Matt Targett (AUS)
- Bryan Lundquist (USA)
- Adam Brown (GBR)
- Gideon Louw (RSA)
- Mark Gangloff (USA)
And as if that were not enough:
From Monday, back from Brazilian nationals, come Cielo Filho, Henrique Barbosa and Felipe Santos, the latter two useful spurs for Gangloff, the rest of the above firing on freestyle.
"They are really going after each other in practice at the moment, I have never seen anything like it. It's a great time to be a sprint coach!" Hawke tells SwimNews. The Italian relay team are in town for 12 days and "practice has been intense!" adds the coach.
Here's an example of the competitiveness going down at Auburn right now, with not a single man wanting to be at the tail end of the action:
Round 1
- 8x25 - 200 speed on 30
- 150 Buoy swim on 2min
- 4x150 HR 140-150 on 2min
- 100 Bk on 2:30
Round 2
- 4x25 - 100 speed on 40
- 150 Buoy swim on 2min
- 3x100 HR 160-170 on 2min
- 150 Bk on 3min
Round 3
- 2x25 - 50 speed on 50
- 150 Buoy swim on 2min
- 2x75 HR Max on 2min
- 200 Bk on 3:30
Having such a gathering of sprint talent in one pool has obvious benefits.
In Hawke's words, the exercise and challenge:
- Raises the level of the competitive environment in training
- Adds greater diversity to the training group (global awareness)
- Allows them to compare themselves to the best swimmers in the world
- Learning and sharing of ideas to enhance future training and competing
- Increases the level of professionalism to the practice environment
The test is not only physical. Facing such keen rivalry each session requires mental toughness and trains the athlete in the art of understanding the environment in which they will be required to excel come the big day. "Each athlete becomes more familiar to their direct competitors that they would not normally see but for once every season or so," says Hawke. It also "allows the athlete the chance to gain an upper-hand psychologically over a competitor (can be good and bad, but worth the risk)."
In addition, Hawke notes: "Athletes now have the chance to train on the mental side of competition in a training environment. This will give them ease of mind at the end of the season."
The coach, who gets to compare great athletes and competitors with his own, benefits too. "It raises my game as a coach, I strive now to deliver the best possible workouts for a variety of sprinters," says Hawke, who gets piece of mind through the belief that "we are working harder than any other group in the world".
As the Australian, himself still a world class sprinter as recently as in a time when Magnini could call himself world champion, peers through the paper trails hovering over Auburn waters, he had what he describes as "a universal sense of where the world of sprint is headed and should be headed".
Come Monday, the group will also get a universal sense of what its like to train alongside the sprint emperor.
