Next Olympic swimming cycle commences at Mpumalanga Grand Prix

Rebecca Meder and Guy Brooks emerged as the stars of the first major swimming meet of the year as the three-leg SA Grand Prix series kicked off in Mbombela, Mpumalanga.

19-year-old Meder, who represented South Africa at last year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, claimed six titles (the 100, 200 and 400m freestyle, the 100m breaststroke, 100m butterfly and 200m individual medley) while 18-year-old Brooks won five events (50, 200 and 200m freestyle and the 50 and 100m butterfly).

The meet was about more than chasing great times and titles though. Rather it was about diving into a new year of racing after a tough week of training.

“Especially to flush out all the Christmas food and New Year’s day and all of that,” reckoned Meder. “It’s just so exciting to race in the New Year.”

The Durban swimmer added: “For me the Grand Prix went really well after a really hard week of training leading up to it.

“It was just exciting to see that my times were better and faster than this time last year and I did more events this time than I did last year so I’m on track for where I want to be.

“For me this Grand Prix is always important. It’s always about seeing where you are and getting back on track and just hitting times with tired bodies… it’s the steppingstone for the Stellenbosch Grand Prix, Durban Grand Prix and then ultimately Commonwealth Games trials – which are at senior nationals.”

Another important part of the meet is talent identification ahead of the new Olympic cycle.

Swimming South Africa’s High Performance Manager Dean Price explained: “This was a training camp and Grand Prix and the focus for this one was younger swimmers, so we’re looking at 13, 14 up to 18.

“The reason we’re looking at them is that we’ve just finished our Olympic cycle which ended in Tokyo so we’re starting to look at the next Olympic cycle which will culminate in Paris in 2024. We want to start developing our next level swimmers.

“The philosophy of the camp is train and race where we train really hard for a week, expose the kids to other competitors and different training programmes and at the end of the week we put them up and race them together and just to see how tough they can be and handle adverse situations and get up and perform. This gives us a good indication of the athletes who can really handle things and have potential to be part of our programme going forward for the next Olympic cycle going into Paris 2024.

“We were very happy with the results, there were some really good swims, we picked up on some kids who showed a lot of potential and we’re really excited about the future of swimming in South Africa,” added Price.

Apart from Meder and Brooks, Joshua Prince took multiple titles in the boys 13 and under category while Scarlett le Roux was a standout swimmer for the girls 13 and under.

The action now moves to Stellenbosch, where the next event in the series will take place from 18-20 February with the final Grand Prix scheduled for KwaZulu-Natal in March.