Athletes around the world are partaking in their nation’s Olympic training camps prior to final travels to Rio, with swimming squads landing in a variety of locales in their pre-Games preparation. Notable foreign teams are utilizing the United States as their Rio training grounds with, for example, South Africa arriving in Florida this week.
China is also calling America its pre-Rio home, as 2016 double World Champion Sun Yang is among the 50 Chinese swimmers, coaches and supporting Olympic team staff currently training on-site at the private Swim Seventy swim facility in Norwalk, Connecticut. Ye Shiwen, 2012 400m IM and 200m IM double gold medalist, is also among the stars in Connecticut.
A Chinese contingency is actually making the Norwalk pool its home for a second time, after an initial group of athletes spent the month of November training there as a trial. Liking what they saw, along with the fact that the pool is close to Rio’s time zone, Yang and his teammates are training at the just-over-a-year-old, 27,000-square-foot facility through July 23rd. Swim Seventy tells SwimSwam that the friendly, yet ‘very methodical’ group trains at least 4 hours a day in the pool, while also using the facility’s gym for dryland exercises.
Having the Chinese swimmers on-deck and in the pool along with the Swim Seventy age groups swimmers is a special experience, owner Ashlee Bunt tells SwimSwam. The ongoing relationship between the Chinese athletes and Swim Seventy is mutually beneficial, with lives being impacted both in and out of the water.
“It’s really inspirational for our swimmers to share the pool with Olympians. We have swim lessons going on with Sun Yang swimming just a few lanes down.”
On the personal engagement side, Bunt says, “We have cultural events and social events with the swimmers from China and our swimmers. The Chinese swimmers here in November spent the Thanksgiving holiday with us.”
Swim Seventy intends to maintain the relationship with the Chinese national team moving forward, as Bunt states, “Sport brings people together…..We all speak the language of swimming.”
Additional notable swimmers among the training camp attendees include Wang Shun, Shi Jinglin, Li Zhuhao, Chen Xinyi and Xu Jiayu.
Are any of the foreign swimmers training outside their home countries dope tested by WADA or their home or host country? If the Chinese athletes train in Australia or the US during periods in between Olympics, who is in charge?
Depending on their world rank, athletes have to file “whereabouts” information with WADA. That means when they leave their home training location, they let doping control agents know where they’ll be. Another interesting side note: in an interview earlier this year, Frank Busch said USADA performs pretty strict testing on any international athletes who train in the U.S. for a period of time: https://staging.swimswam.com/team-usas-frank-busch-talks-doping-control-ncaas-rio-podcast/
Rumor has it in CT that doping control agents came by this facility this week to test Yang and others
Great to see the Chinese team traning here in CT. Good luck to all of them. Sun should have no problems bringing home the gold in his competitions. Not sure about Ye. Would be nice to see her capture another gold.
Not my first choices for Gold.
From the pictures I found online, this appears to be a 6 lane, 50 meter pool–not a ton of lane space for the team.
Smart move making the trek to Conneticut for their training camp. Heard they wanted to get some training in with Bryce Keblish in the lead up to rio. He’s got immensely powerful underwaters
Nah, it is because of Sedlak. I heard the Chinese are trying to lure him to coach in their country. He is well know for his love of dim sum and egg foo young.
Egg foo young? I heard it was Kung Pao chicken.
The myatery deepens.
What’s Ye swimming in Rio? I thought she didn’t make the team?
She didn’t make in the 400IM.
She will swim 200 IM
Thanks wasn’t sure.
I see two Clenbuterol swimmers on their men4x100 medley, one served one year suspension, the other was only given a warning.
If all the athletes have served their suspensions, I don’t see what the problem is or why they should be treated any differently.
Did anyone say they should be treated differently?
One of the two clenbuterol swimmmers is actually still waiting for FINA to resolve the situation. He was only given a warning by Chinese Federation and FINA has stated they are looking into the matter, so no, he has not served any suspension.
The formal team list has not been revealed, but chances are Wang is not joining the team this time, possibly as a punishment to his case, though he is not formally banned.
Maybe we can get a deal – your Olympic swimmers can keep training here if you stop hacking our government, corporate, and private computer servers, like, say, the FDIC.
Please keep your political comments to yourself or in other forums. People come here for swimming news, not political stuff outside of our sport.
Nah, man. Everything’s interconnected. Sports is politics (Link).
Not saying this dude’s comment was a good comment or anything, but it shouldn’t be rejected just because it’s not just about sports.
They have come to build a high speed railway for the NE corridor.They can do it for half the price.
It would be a good idea wouldn’t it? Oh & everyone hacks .Hillary did not eve .trust the State Department .
Preach it, girl.
Thank you– whoever you are– for this story. While we can be confident that Whereabouts requirements have been met, it is always good to give USADA a heads-up when non-members are training stateside with USA Swimming members.