Danes Hold Training Camp To Develop Young Talent

In the past year we have once again seen the Danish women excel at the highest level. At the FINA World Championships in Barcelona they collected four medals with Jeanette Ottesen taking the gold in the 50 butterfly, Lotte Friis winning silver in both the 800 and 1500 freestyle and Rikke Moller Pedersen finishing with the silver in the 200 breaststroke.

Pedersen also set a new world record in the 200 breaststroke posting a time of 2:19.11 in the semi-final.

Now the Danes are looking to develop the next wave of young swimmers leading into the 2014 European Junior Championships. At the 2013 European Juniors the team only came away with two medals won by the same athlete. Daniel Steen Andersen won the gold in the 100 butterfly and a bronze in the 50 butterfly.

In an effort to improve on those results Michael Hinge has gathered 16 of the top Danish juniors for a 10 day training camp in Austria.

In an interview with Christian Søes Hinge explained the purpose of the camp, “There are basically two reasons for this training camp,” said Hinge. “The first purpose is to strengthen the social ties within the group, so we create a team that works together.”

“The second purpose is to stimulate and develop the swimmers’ aerobic base, which basically is the basic form we will build on towards the European Junior Championships this summer.”

Hinge has set up the camp to challenge the swimmers in and out of the pool including cross country skiing as a major component of the training plan, “Here’s cross country a great alternative to swimming, the heart is stimulated, using the whole body, we have the opportunity at the end of training camp to be skiing up to 5 hours.”

He also went on to describe the general training plan for the camp, “We have two training sessions a day. We start with swimming from at 7-9. We have perfect conditions for the swim, where we have a beautiful 25 meter hall with 4 lanes only to us.”

“After 2 hours in the water, there is food and rest, and then you go skiing in the afternoon. In the beginning, we have approx. 2 hours on skis, but I expect that some of the swimmers can get up to 4-5 hours of skiing the last few days.”