cam's update

hi everyone, its cam here,
today was a pretty intense day, we had two taining sessions, morning and night, and i also had a weights session with coach tom. their weights room was pretty amazing, it had tons of different machines. in between the two sessions, seb, euge and i chilled at our host house. in the afternoon session neil walker was helping me with my starts, videoing them and showing me what i could do better. for dinner we went to a place called chipotles, which is like a mexican restaurant. we all got burritos, which are very hard to eat without spilling everywhere. looking forward to max arriving tomorrow, and another day of hard training.

thank you

OLYMPIC CHAMP BJ BEDFORD WITH ALEX/PHOEBE

Thank you BJ Bedford for helping Phoebe and Alex with our underwater sub kick and our backstroke starts. we much appreciate it. she helped us use shimmer kicks off every wall and work on our starts.
also we'd like to thank our homestays in the Cayman Islands for looking after us and taking us to training morning and night.
we r now safely in Dallas with our new homestay families.
hi to all. xoxo ALEX AND PHOEBE

23/6/10 Day 1 in Dallas.Texas

Walking into Neil Walker's pool at Rockwall aquatics was a very impresive way to start off the morning. First of all for a high school team to have an 8 lane 50m pool, a 4 lane 25 yards pool and seating to hold up to 800 spectators is amazing to see. The other facilities of the weight rooms, change rooms and meeting room specifically for swimmers where swimmers can eat, chill out and watch videos on a projector were all world class. Coach Neil and Tom have been very generous giving us full access to the pool and the meet on the weekend should be a great racing experiences for all of us.

Yes mum i did get the email about the homework......

Eugene.

Are these guys having a ball, or what?!!

Born to Shop

When it comes to shopping, every girl knows she must fuel up to be ready for the demands of the day ahead...

So, first stop, a beautiful buffet breakfast at the five-star Westin Hotel, right on the beach...

Then it was smiles all around as the dedicated shoppers headed to town...

...and the adjacent craft market!

Even when the skies opened up with some big rain, Caribbean style,

our shoppers were not deterred!

Stingray City!!! (and a blog entry from one of the boys!)

Have received some wonderful updates this morning from our hostess with the mostest, Sara Mackay. This photo was taken as the group headed off on a catamaran to Stingray City. Rod at Red Sail Sports is our hero, as is BJ Bedford, American Olympic gold medalist who joined the team for the adventure...

And a couple of blog entries from the swimmers...

On Saturday we all attended the Flowers 1 mile Sea Swim. The swim was amazing, it was a very hot day, and the water was crystal blue. Everyone did great swims.
Overall Eugene came 4th, Seb came 8th, Beth came 12th, Cam came 15th, Lucy came 18th, Phoebe came 26th and Alex came 37th.
And Drew, who got beaten by the little girls, came 43rd. Both Beth and Eugene got trophies. Eugene placed 3rd guy and Beth was 2nd girl.
After the race random prizes were given out, Cam won a Cayman Airways air ticket and Lucy won a pass to swim with dolphins. Everyone had a great day.
Seb

Sunday we all went on a catamaran to ‘stingray city’ with lots of other people to swim with the stingrays. It was a great experience for us all. The water was nice, warm and very shallow so we could all stand up to see the stingrays. At first there were lots and lots of shrieking coming from the girls as the stingrays swam around them but they soon got used to them. There were several of them, big and little. Drew caught us a couple of big stingrays which we got to hold.
After that we all got back on the boat and travelled to the MacKay’s beach house for lunch. Lunch was great we had sausages and salad, which Cam actually ate some of! And popsicles. We all returned to our home stays exhausted from the awesome day we had.
Lucy

Thank you Cayman

A very big thank you to everyone in the Cayman Islands who did so much to welcome and look after our swimmers this past week. What generous hosts you all have been. Thank you again to Mr. Frankie Flowers and his family for their inspiring dedication to swimming and for hosting such a world class event. And to the Mackays and other host families, you have been amazing once again. Please do make your way downunder some day soon so we can do the same!

PS - Drew - the Tim Tams are all yours!!