Swim Ireland, in conjunction with Kingfisher Club and NUI Galway launched its new Connacht Swimming Performance Centre on Wednesday, 14 November at the Kingfisher Club, Galway. The event was attended by representatives from NUI Galway, the Irish Sports Council, Swim Ireland, Kingfisher Club, Connacht clubs, swimmers and coaches.

The Connacht Swimming Performance Centre(in operation since September 2012) is based at the Kingfisher Club in NUI Galway and is led by swimming coach Pearse McGuigan, in conjunction with Peter Banks, National Performance Director. The Centre is designed specifically to provide additional training hours, develop skills, provide opportunities for the best swimmers to train together on a weekly basis and provide support to club, coaches and athletes.  A total of twenty five swimmers currently avail of the centre, across a variety of training programmes. Swimmers are offered a range of sports science services such as strength and conditioning, video analysis and physiology and they can avail of both full and part-time programmes.

Swim Ireland’s National Performance Director, Peter Banks, said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with Kingfisher Club and NUI Galway to develop swimming in Connacht. The new centre will help us to raise the level of training opportunities for Irish swimmers at home, and will also provide the structure and programmes to enable swimmers who are based in Connacht to achieve success at European, World, and ultimately Olympic level. We are grateful for the support of the Irish Sports Council, Kingfisher Club, NUI Galway and other partners in this regard.”

Speaking at the launch Kingfisher Managing Director, Joe Cosgrove, commented: “The Kingfisher Fitness Club are honoured to be chosen as Connacht’s Premier Performance Centre. Through our partnership we strive to help the young talent steadily emerging throughout Connacht and allow them develop their skills to propel them towards successfully performing at international standard. We fully believe that we can support the new generation of Irish swimmers with better training facilities and opportunities. By setting ourselves high standards and living and working by these standards we cannot but see results.”

Gary Ryan, Elite Sports Development Officer, NUI Galway, said: “This is an exciting development for Sport in the region. NUI Galway has a long history of supporting excellence in sport and this Performance Centre is an important venture for Swimming in Ireland. We hope that this will not only help the development of young sporting talent but encourage more students to study at NUI Galway and progress their sporting performance to the highest levels.”

- ENDS –