There’s a running joke within swimming that you either can’t swim breaststroke or can’t swim anything else.
While that theme may be true within the sport of swimming (and the author of this story is Exhibit A), how does it apply to other sports? Specifically, how good could a bunch of breaststrokers be at wheelchair basketball?
Some of Great Britain’s top athletes put that to the test this week, taking time during a stroke-specific camp to show off their wheelchair ball skills.
World record-holder Adam Peaty, Olympian Andrew Willis and Commonwealth Games medalist Molly Renshaw were among the basketballing participants, strapping into wheelchairs to try out a different training activity.
They first ran through some drills, then battled on the basketball court in a quick pickup game. You can see some brief footage of the game below, courtesy of the British Swimming Twitter feed:
Blue team took it 10-8 pic.twitter.com/3X538yUves
— Aquatics GB (@Aquatics_GB) September 17, 2015
“It was good to work really closely with people that we don’t normally train with,” said Peaty, who is currently among the best male swimmers on the planet. “We had to work hard together to score and it was nice to have that integration.
“It was pretty hard though. It’s nice to have perspective on other sports and see how the skills differ. It was great to get out there and have fun.”
You can read more about the sport crossover experience on the British Swimming website here.