News Archive 2020

Great start to Counties 2020

We had a cracking start to Counties with Ben Newell claiming a silver in the Senior 1500m Freestyle and Maddie Pike landing a podium place with bronze in the Junior girls 1500m Freestyle.

The younger relay teams also had great swims and gained great experience racing against teams with older swimmers in them.

Fantastic swimming all round - good luck next week in the 800s and more relays.

Counties 2020 Success Continues

We had more success at Counties this weekend with both Maddie Pike and Ben Newell claiming silver in the 800m Freestyle in the Senior Boys and Junior Girls races.

The girls relay teams also had great swims and, just like the boys last week, gained great experience racing against teams with older swimmers in them.

Good luck to everyone swimming in the main weekends

Counties 2020 - More great swimming at the Main Champs #1

The first main weekend of Counties produced more terrific swimming from our County Qualifiers with Lilia Gilbert coming 2nd three times in 50 & 200 Back and 100 Free, Adrien Storck-Wihlidal getting 5th in the 50 Breast and Ben Newell back on the Senior podium with bronze in the 200 Fly and a finalist in the 100 Back.

Good luck to everyone swimming next weekend

Counties 2020 - Main Champs #2 - A terrific way to finish

Well done to everyone who took part in the final weekend of Counties! We had more success with Maddie back on the podium taking Junior Championship bronze in the 200 Fly as well as coming joint 2nd in her age group for 100 Fly and 5th in 50 Breast.

Other age group finalists and medal winners were:

• Lilia 2nd in 50 Free and 3rd in 100 Back

• Oscar 7th in 50 Back

• Zack 6th in 100 Free and 8th in 50 Back

• Matthew 6th in 50 Back

• Ben 5th in 50 Back and 7th in 200 Back

• Adrien 6th in 100 Breast

• Demetri 7th in 50 Fly

...and the boys 4x 50m freestyle relay team of Ben N, Coach Danny, Ben T and Alfie coming 8th in an exciting conclusion to the proceedings.

Fantastic swimming from everyone - and we're very proud of our 9th place overall from a Club with the 3rd fewest swimmers.

Looking forward to the Long Course season now and building towards Regionals.

Bracknell Masters Gala: Well done Masters - 4th in Top Visiting Club competition

Bracknell 497

1. Wycombe Dist 485

2. Teddington 442

3. Reading 246

4. Didcot & Bar 181

5. Kings Corm 173

6. Farnham 154

7. Co Oxford 129

8. Elmbridge 115

9. Rushmoor Ryl 107

10. Otter 101.5

Our Masters swimmers had a fantastic afternoon at the Bracknell & Wokingham Masters Gala last weekend. It's one of the few galas we enter and the whole squad did really well earning lots of medals and racking up more points than some pretty sizable clubs.

Congratulations to everyone who took part!

Training Schedule Disruption due to COVID-19

Unfortunately but understandably, we have been informed by both the Oratory School and Headington Girls School that their pools are no longer available for us to use while the country is dealing with the COVID-19 situation.

All training sessions at The Oratory and at Headington Girls is therefore cancelled with immediate effect.

• Headington will review the situation on 20 April 2020.

• The Oratory will review the situation after Easter.

All Training Cancelled due to COVID-19

In line with new guidance issued by Swim England we have taken the difficult decision to cancel all training effective immediately.

An email has been sent to all members with further details.

New Online Training Videos available now!

Coach Danny has created the first of our COVID-19-Busting fitness sessions (with a little help from Captain Ben).

Check out the first one on Abs here: https://www.didcotbarramundi.com/home/online-training

We're back in the pool... at last!

With special thanks to everyone involved in the behind-the-scenes action required to get us here, we're finally able to welcome our swimmers back to training at Didcot Wave.

Sessions are limited and timings are different, but at least we're in the water!

The new timetable will be sent out by email to all squad members - and you need to watch the 'Return to Swimming' video before you can get in.

Happy swimming everyone!

Lilia selected for Swim England National Development Camp!

Congratulations Lilia for being selected to take part in the Swim England National Development Camp. Such a fantastic achievement!

Training Fees for Season 2020/21

The Committee has agreed the training fees for the new season and they're published under the Club Info section of the website. All Club members will also get an email from our Treasurer to confirm how much our individual fees are.

The effect of GLL's phased re-opening plan is that we've been granted access to just 4 hours of pool time at the Wave compared to the 19.75 hours we had previously; and lane hire costs increased 27%.

We have therefore had to remodel the Club's finances and as a result we've unfortunately had to increase the cost of some squads training and bring other squad costs in line with the amount of training we're able to offer.

The Committee still firmly believes we're offering excellent value for money and will review the fees again in November when we know the full effect of adding Headington back into our training schedule.

Happy training everyone - it's great to be back in the pool!

We're back back back in the pool again!

We're so happy that #Lockdown2 is over and we're fortunate to be in Tier 2 so able to get back to training again - YES!!!

Some of our pool providers have changed what they're able to offer us until the end of the year, so we'll need to adjust the training schedule. Our coaches and committee are working really hard to rearrange everything to fairly distribute our resources across the squads.

The new timetable will be sent out shortly by email to all squad members - and you need to watch the 'Return to Swimming' video so you're familiar with the procedures that keep us all safe.

Welcome back and happy swimming everyone!

Tier 4 Lockdown - All Swim Training Cancelled

Oxfordshire entered Tier 4 Lockdown on Boxing Day and as a result, all swimming pools have had to close and therefore all swimming training is cancelled.

Our coaching team will put together a land training programme in due course - look out for further communications about this by email.