The significance of next week’s 2017 British Swimming Championships is considerable. It marks the beginning of a new Olympic cycle to Tokyo 2020 where the aspirations of athletes and coaches will be to discover how to win after winning.
It will be the first time since the historic and heroic performances in Rio that Britain’s best have competed at a major event on home soil but last year’s celebrations will be far from their minds as they compete for selection at a range of World and European events in the summer of 2017.
Coaches and athletes have been challenged to strive for continual improvement and the British Championships at Ponds Forge, Sheffield (18-23 April) is the starting point as they discover how to build on last summer’s performances in four years’ time.
“Rio 2016 is history now,” explained British Swimming Head Coach Bill Furniss. “It was a great result for us but we are now at the start of a new cycle, we’ve pressed the reset button and we’re moving on.“These Championships will be the first time since the Rio Games where all of our athletes will be firing and trying to make a team for the major summer international events and these are headlined by the World Championships this year."
“We’ve had retirements, which are to be expected at the end of an Olympic cycle, but we have good depth of talent in Britain and it’s important that we start off the new cycle in the right way. These championships will be a good introduction as we start to build on the foundations already laid to Tokyo.”
One of the key objectives for Furniss will be to analyse talent across the entire event spectrum with exciting new faces emerging in voids left by retirements.
“I know we’re strong in certain events but it will be interesting to see the new talent across some of the other events we’re developing. I want to see how we’re starting to grow in these areas as a new generation steps forward in this Tokyo cycle,” explained Furniss.
Since Rio there have been some changes across the British Swimming programme, in terms of coach and athlete movements, but Furniss is pleased this happened immediately after Rio as people have been able to put in some great work ahead of the Championships.
“I’ve spent a lot of time on the road recently and I’m really pleased with the good work I’m seeing. I know we will see our athletes in good shape at the Championships and this will be exciting as they compete at a major event in Britain for the first time since Rio,” said Furniss.
“We’re in a good place and I’m looking forward to the Championships where I’m confident we will see some fast swimming from a pool of strong, talented swimmers.”
Whereas Furniss is excited about the Championships and seeing the performances unfold, he is also aware that results at the beginning of the cycle are just the starting point.
“We shouldn’t compare this year to last,” explained Furniss. “This is a new four-year journey. What we did well in the last cycle was to get better each year leading to the Olympics and that’s the target this time around – continual improvement.
“What we have to realise now is that we’ve had a successful four-years and with that comes higher expectations. We need to learn to do it all over again but better than we did before. That has to be our philosophy from day one. We need to learn to win after winning.“The aim of our senior swimmers is to make the team then swim a season’s best in Budapest. This is the first stage of their preparations for the World Championships and the first step on the road to Tokyo.
“The World Championships are very important in their own right but the main thing we want to do well is to improve year on year and we will learn from them whatever the results and take that forward.”
This year’s British Championships offer some strong competition opportunities to a wide spread of athletes with selection policies also in place for the World Junior Championships, World University Games, European Junior Championships and European Youth Olympic Festival teams.
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