Liam Tancock puts the much less muscled and less tanned journalists through their paces!

The world’s fastest 50m backstroker with a time of 24.04 seconds, 25 year old Liam Tancock is one of our brightest medal hopes for the London 2012 Olympic games.

We caught up with him in a rare break between training sessions at west London’s  beautiful Porchester Spa.

Are you looking forward to the 2012 Olympics?

I can’t wait. Ever since it was announced it has inspired me and with just two years to go now it’s pretty exciting.

You are best known as a 50m backstroker. But you will be swimming the 100m in the Olympics won’t you?

That’s right. The 50m backstroke isn’t an Olympic event. I’ve been working hard on the 100 to improve my times.

What are the main requirements stepping up from 50m to 100m backstroke?

Obviously in the 50m there is no turning whereas in the 100 there will be. Getting the turns right is the key element I’ve been working on. But it’s definitely a slightly different focus. The 50m is an all out sprint though to be honest the 100 virtually is too. You’ve got to be clever with the way you race, you need the right training and race tactics to get out fast and strong and be able to hold it so you can come back strong as well. It’s all about being consistently fast.

Do you think we are going to get many medals in 2012?

I think what Rebecca Adlington did picking up two golds at the last Olympics was amazing. That hasn’t happened for 100 years. Really anything can happen. The Olympics inspires so many people, not just us but junior levels and kids in schools. I think it’s really an important time. If the fans are behind us, which I’m sure they will be, great things can happen.

Who are your main competitors?

Americans, Australians, Spanish guys, Russians.  There’s some really good competition out there at the moment. I’ve been testing myself against them for a number of years.

What is your typical training routine?
Well a typical Monday would be to get up, do 2.5 hours in the pool with stretching before and after. Then it’s down to the gym where I’ll do weights for an hour and 15 minutes. Then it’s back to my house for some lunch and recovery. And then two and half hours later I’ll be back down the pool and swim for another 2.5 hours and stretch! Then back home, have some food and off to bed.

Is what you eat really important. Is there a special diet you have to follow?

To an extent. I’ve grown up doing the right thing so it’s the norm for me. You’ve got to eat the right things but at the right time. You can’t eat too close to training but you need to ensure you get the right nutrients into your body as soon as swimming has finished.

You’re a pretty sporty guy. You could have played professional rugby couldn’t you?

I love sport. I’ve always loved sport. I played rugby for Exeter and really enjoyed it. Obviously I swam for Exeter too. It came to a time when I had to decide what was going to be my main focus and I chose swimming and never looked back.

Liam Tancock in action at the Porchester Spa, Bayswater

Why did you choose swimming?

I really don’t know. My brother used to swim and I had great friends who were swimmers.

I had great friends who played rugby too. But swimming was something I did more often than rugby. I used to play rugby a few times a week whereas swimming can be ten times a week.

You’re a big fan of Exeter City aren’t you?

I’m an Exeter City fan and Exeter Chiefs fan. Both the football  and rugby teams are doing well at the moment and I’m a proud supporter of them both.

Goggleblog's pale and skinny Chris Price with the muscular Liam Tancock

Finally, when you go on holiday are you able to relax by the pool? Or do you feel the need to get in and start racing?

Ha, I always have to have a pool when I go away but it can’t be an ordinary oblong pool. It’s got to have a lagoon or something that makes it more interesting than the pools I swim in all the time!

Liam Tancock is a Speedo sponsored athlete. For more info on Liam or Speedo please see speedo.co.uk

See the video interview with Liam below:

Bill Furniss, Rebecca Adlington's coach

Just what goes into producing a top, world record breaking Olympic swimmer ?
Goggleblog‘s Chris Price was put through his paces with Rebecca Adlington’s coach, Bill Furniss, to find out….

How representative was the training session I’ve just done compared with what you do with Rebecca Adlington?

It’s just a little taster really. The fundamentals are the same, it’s just the amount of swimming that is different.

So how many hours does Rebecca train in the pool each week?

Rebecca does 20 hours a week, 10 two hour sessions. She swims up to 80 kilometres a week and on top of that she does three gym sessions. It’s a pretty hard lifestyle.

How important is the gym workout?

It’s really for core strength and stability as well as injury prevention. Rebecca’s a distance swimmer so we don’t do a lot of power work. She doesn’t do any heavy lifting. There’s more circuits and muscle endurance.

At what age did you recognise that Rebecca was such a huge talent?

Around 12 years of age. She’s always had a tenacity about her training and a desire to do things well. She’s a perfectionist and even at the age of 12 you could see that. She wanted it very badly and was prepared to work very hard. We could see she had great feel and good technique – she was a bit rough around the edges, a bit raw, but with the attitude she had we fast tracked her.

It does seem that we are getting some good swimmers through. What do you think our chances are for the 2012 Olympics?

Yes, I’m pretty excited.  We’ve got some great swimmers. Not just Rebecca, but Jo Jackson, Liam Tancock, Fran Halsall, Elizabeth Simmonds. The list goes on. We have quite a few medal prospects. That being said it’s not easy to win a medal. We will be going into those games with a lot of opportunities and the more opportunities the more medal chances.

Do you think we’d do much better if we had more 50m pools where people could train?

I like 50m pools and would like more of them. The facility argument is very important, but I think as important, if not more important, is to have good coach/swimmer relationships. If you have good coaches working with good swimmers in good pool time then that’s the critical thing. Ideally that pool time is 50m, but don’t think that if you haven’t got a 50m pool you can’t become an Olympic champion. Rebecca proved you can. She does most of her swimming in a short course pool.

Do you have to be so determined even as young as 12 to make it as an Olympic champion?

There are some people who come through quite late. What I would say to most age group swimmers is don’t worry if at the age of 15, 16, 17 if you are not one of the very best. People improve at different rates and maturation has a lot to do with it. Boys are definitely later than girls coming through and at a young age the limiting factor is technique so what I would say to young swimmers is concentrate on improving your technique, improving your skills as well as your fitness. By the age of 18 it is usually a much more level playing field.

Coach Bill Furniss gives Goggleblog's Chris Price a few invaluable tips

What are the main faults you identify with ordinary swimmers? What do they typically get wrong?

People tend to focus on effort rather than technique. I’m not saying I don’t want swimmers to work very hard. I do. But it’s counterproductive if you are working very hard with poor technique. The main four things around technique, especially on freestyle, are a very good six beat kick, nice and low breathing action, stroke length and relaxation.

Bill Furniss is a Speedo coach. For more information go to Speedo’s website

A keen swimmer and triathlete, Lisa spotted a gap in the market with a watch that can automatically count your laps

Swimovate’s Pool-Mate is a fabulous new gadget for swimmers. It may look like a watch but it is actually a fully automatic swimming computer which works out your speed, distance swum and calories burnt while you swim.

It also tells swimmers how efficient they are so that they can adapt their stroke or swimming style accordingly. And unlike any other swim product on the market it counts the number of laps completed without having to stop and press a button at the end of each lap.

Pool-Mate was the brainchild of keen triathlete, Lisa Irlam, who, along with her husband, set up Swimovate in November 2007.

She quit her job to invest her time and efforts into developing and manufacturing the Pool-Mate. It was a risk which has paid off as the Pool-Mate has become a huge success since it was launched in September 2009.

Goggleblog caught up with Lisa Irlam, inventor of the Pool-Mate, to ask her how it all came about.

How did you get the idea for the Pool-Mate?

Both my husband and I are triathletes and wanted something to help with our swimming. But when we looked for a device which would keep track of our performance there was nothing. We spotted there was a huge gap in the market for a product which could automatically count laps and measure performance so we decided to have a go at making one ourselves.

So, aside from swimming, what is your background? You must have been confident that you could actually make something which worked.

We had both worked in the electronics industry for twenty years. We made digital radios and other consumer electronics so we had the technical experience. We had also worked with manufacturers in the Far East.

That must have been invaluable when you decided to go it alone and manufacture pool mate yourselves?

Yes it was. We had no investment in Pool-Mate and financed and sourced everything ourselves. We did go on Dragons’ Den but got turned down. The Dragons liked the product but they couldn’t see a market for it.

How many have you sold so far?

Since Pool-Mate launched in September 2009 we have sold 12,000 in 60 different countries. The UK is our main market at the moment, as this is where we are based, but we also distribute all over Europe, Singapore and Brazil. The Pool-Mate currently sells in about 20 outlets in the US, but we are working to expand on this as there are seventy million regular swimmers in the USA.

Do you find that recreational swimmers buy the Pool-Mate or is it just performance swimmers?

About half the people who buy the Pool-Mate use it for recreational swimming. They want to be able to relax and think about something else when they swim rather than trying to keep a count of the laps.

So how does it work?

It has a built in accelerometer which monitors regular swimming motion and looks for a gap in the pattern which corresponds to a turn. It works for all strokes and tumble turns as well as for pushing off the side.

So what is next? Any new products or new versions of Pool-Mate planned?

We are currently working on the Pool-Mate Pro which will be a downloadable version of the Pool-Mate. This will have a USB so that you will be able interface with your PC and upload your performance data. It will come with software so that you will be able to analyse your performance statistics, produce graphs and so on. We also plan to have a heat rate version ready for launch in 2011.

Who are your main competitors?

There was nothing like this on the market when we developed the Pool-Mate and there is still no-one else producing a product which does what the Pool-Mate does.

Swimovate

Goggleblog catches up with Kathy Watson, author of The Crossing, a book about the first person to swim The Channel, Captain Matthew Webb

Kathy Watson, author of The Crossing

What inspired you to write a book about Captain Matthew Webb’s channel crossing?
I was reading a book about swimming technique and there was a short introduction describing the development of swimming as a sport. It had a section on Matthew Webb’s swim and I was fascinated by the details. Just the idea of swimming for nearly 22 hours seemed staggering.

So I read a bit more about him and as soon as I heard about his insane venture, trying to swim Niagara Falls, I knew it would make a great book. In the end, via Matthew Webb’s life, I was able to write about a whole range of things – Victorian England, the cult of celebrity and, of course, my first love, swimming.

Did you find out anything interesting about his life while researching the book?
I really enjoyed interviewing Channel swimmers, finding out what motivated them, how they’d trained, how they felt when they either succeeded or failed.

Are there any other swimming books that have inspired you?
Waterlog by Roger Deakin. It’s about open water swimming and it has a strong environmental message. I also love Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson. It’s about swimming and reading and swimming and writing which are my favourite things. The Million Dollar Mermaid is also great. It’s about Esther Williams and all those over the top movies where swimming meets Hollywood. And, of course, John Cheever’s short story, The Swimmer.

Would you like to swim the channel yourself?
Yes. In my dreams. I am strictly a warm water swimmer.

What are your favourite pools/places to swim?
Park Road in London’s Crouch End. I love the Lido there in the summer. The Ladies Pond at Hamsptead Heath is gorgeous.

How often do you swim?
Two to three times a week. Pretty much every day during school holidays.

Are you planning to do the Swimathon this year?
Yes. I do it with my children, a friend and her children. It’s become an annual event.

Buy The Crossing from Amazon