Category: Olympics

Hello,

I am back in my flat in Manchester again having just had a very busy few weeks. We were in London at the beginning of this month for the London Prepares event in the Olympic pool and then we headed to Greece for the World League. We played ten games in ten days and achieved some promising results.

The London Prepares event was a very exciting experience. Each day we travelled by bus through the Olympic Park to the Water Polo Arena. The venue is incredible – walking in to the main pool hall on that first day gave us goose bumps! The facilities are amazing: the competition pool has the biggest grand stand I’ve ever seen, there is a huge warm up pool out the back and each team has their own meeting/changing room with showers and bathrooms. All the volunteers were fantastic too!

Our first game was against Australia and despite the final result I thought we did alright. It was 6-4 going into the last quarter but the Aussies were just too strong for us and pulled away to win 10-4.

It was very similar the following night against the Hungarians. We were within a few goals of them until the end when they widened the gap to win 17-10.

The third evening, though, was our night! We had a nail bitingly close match against the USA (who are favourites to win the Olympics). They went 4-0 up at the beginning but we fought back to 4-3 at half time. We hung in there until the very end when we even had an opportunity to take the lead. But their experience proved too strong for us on this occasion and they held on to win 7-6.

The result against the Americans gave us a real confidence boost, although the following week was to show us that we need to learn how to win in these close games.

Two days after the London Prepares event we travelled for 12 hours to Volos in Greece for the World League. In our group we had Russia (our first opponents at the Olympics). Greece (World Champions), and The Netherlands (Olympic Champions). Normally we would have played each team twice over two weekends but because of the Olympics the schedule was much tighter and we had to do it all in just one weekend. We played six games in sixty hours and it was hard work!

During the first round we had painfully close results, losing all three games by only one goal! In our first match against Russia we went down early but came back and were in the lead with just over a minute to go. The Russians are ruthless, however, and they equalised then scored the winner with ten seconds left. It was a similar story against both the Greeks and the Dutch – they were ahead, then we were ahead – but we never quite managed to hang on to the end. After every game we were heartbroken as we’ve never come so close to beating these top teams and the wins were ours for the taking.

During the next round our inexperience started to show and we couldn’t quite keep up with the others. We still had very competitive matches but lost all three games by four goals this time.

So that was our ten games in ten days and we got excruciating near to beating some of the world’s top teams. It was a great learning experience for us and we now know what we need to work on over these last few weeks. It is also very encouraging because a year ago these teams were beating us by a lot… so we are improving very quickly!

The next big thing, of course, is the team selection on 25th June. We have a squad of 19 that needs to go down to 13. No matter what the result, it is going to be very difficult as we are all such good friends. We have one more chance to impress Szilvester at a training camp in Barcelona next week, after which we are in Manchester until selection…

Fingers crossed… hopefully in my next blog I will be an official London 2012 team member!

Francesca

Hello,

I am writing this month from my bedroom on a Saturday morning having just had a lovely lie in. I usually find it difficult to sleep in on the weekends after getting up for training all week, Chloe and Rosie are always telling me off for waking them up too early so I shall stay quiet in my room for a while while I type this up.

Since my last blog we have been not been abroad at all, just training Monday –Friday in Manchester. Szilvester (our coach) did travel to the Olympic Qualification Tournament in Italy to watch the quarter finals, the winners of whom we will play against at the Olympics. There were some upset results too. Reigning World and Olympics Champions Greece and The Netherlands did not make it through. The top four in the end were Hungary, Russia, Italy and Spain. We are all quite pleased with that as, apart from Hungary, we have had really close results with all those teams over the last 12 months. We are hoping to do the same against Hungary next week in London.

On Monday we are travelling down to the Test Event in London by bus, arriving at our hotel in the early evening. We aren’t allowed to stay in the Athlete Village yet as it is all on ‘lock down’ for security. We are then spending the week training in the new Olympic pool before our first game against Australia on Thursday evening. I am really looking forward to this match, the last time we played them we were all exhausted and jet lagged in Canberra and now the tables have turned and I hope we can take them by surprise! We also have to get them back for breaking one of our players ribs while we were over there, so victory would be the best revenge!

We had a very interesting talk from David Faulkner this week. He is an Olympic gold medallist from ’88 with the Men’s Hockey Team. He is also now the Performance Director of British Hockey. He had some great insights into what it will be like at the games and was encouraging us not to just focus on winning a medal but to think about we would want to feel after we’ve just played our last game, something I thought was really interesting but had not thought about before.

I also had my last day at work this week. Over the last 18 months I have been working part time in the Research Office at The University of Manchester. It has been the perfect little job for me as it is just across the road from the pool, I’d always run in with dripping wet hair and stinking of chlorine, and they were happy to be flexible around my training and trips abroad. It was full of really nice people too, on my last day I walked in and they had decorated my desk in an Olympic theme! My boss had also made this incredible Olympic Rings cake. I was very sad to leave!

Time now to focus solely on preparations for the next few months. We are down to London on Monday for the week and then Greece for World League on the Tuesday after that. Also, for anyone that may have looked at my empty twitter page over the last 6 months, I have decided that I am going to start tweeting pictures about these last few months leading up to and during the Olympics so have a look at that for more regular updates about how we are getting on.

See you in London

Francesca

Hello,

I am writing this month from my flat in Manchester on a particularly warm sunny day for mid March. We have a nice little garden at the back of our place and Rosie is lying out there now trying to get her first tan of the year. The clocks go forward this weekend which I am looking forward to; it is so much easier to get up in the mornings for training when it is light outside.

We returned from Australia a few weeks ago and flew out to Italy only a couple of days later for the next round of the Len Champions Cup. We were split into two teams to compete in this tournament and I travelled to Recco in Northern Italy which is right on the coast and so beautiful! As in Australia we played the same day we arrived and didn’t fare too well against Pro Recco, the national Italian champions, losing 20-7. A couple of days later we had adjusted to the time difference from Australia and put up a much better fight keeping them within four goals to only lose 10-6.

Since Italy we have slipped back into our normal routine of training five hours a day in Manchester. We are in the gym every morning and back to doing really hard swim sets in the pool. We have also been doing a lot of flexibility work, stretching after every session and pilates a couple of times a week. We had some fun at training yesterday experimenting with Olympic themed temporary tattoos designed and kindly donated by Lydia Leith. You can see by the photo that some of us (Lisa!) maybe had too much fun!

We have also had a very special visitor to training this week – World Cup winner and England’s most capped Rugby player, Jason Leonard. He came down to the pool with a couple of his mates to watch the session and then they got in and had a go. I was impressed because they weren’t bad at all, even managing to score a couple past Rosie (although we did put the floor up so they could touch the bottom!). Afterwards we had a great Q&A session with him and it was incredible to hear his stories from all the years he represented England. His knowledge of playing under pressure and in front of big crowds was so valuable in our preparation for the Olympics.

It is all go now for us. We are in Manchester training for the next few weeks before we head down to London for the test event in early May and then World League in Greece straight after that. I also have my 25th birthday in a few days which is a bit scary as I know I’ll be 25 when I compete at the Olympics so now it makes it seem so much closer!

Francesca

G’day from Australia!

I am writing February’s blog from the AIS in Canberra and believe it or not, it is raining outside right now! We arrived just over a week ago to beautiful sunshine and it stayed sunny all week up, right up until our one day off when it rained most of the day! That was two days ago and it hasn’t stopped raining since.

We arrived at the AIS last Monday, exhausted after 35 hours of travelling. That same afternoon we had to fight off not only the sleep but also the Aussie team because we played against them within a few hours of getting here. I was lucky to have got some reasonable sleep on the flight, but lots of the girls had only slept on the plane for couple of hours so that first game was as tough mentally as it was physically.

Since then we’ve quickly settled into the pattern of training every morning and playing against the Aussies each evening. As I write, we haven’t yet beaten them, but we have come close and we’ve played some incredibly hard matches.

At the moment the Australians are one of the top-ranked teams in the world so it has been great preparation for us having such high-intensity matches every day. They are also known as one of the dirtiest teams and they have certainly lived up to their reputation – many of us are covered in scratches and bruises, and one of us is even out for a while with a broken rib! We try to give as good as we get, but they are also about twice the size of us too!

Staying at the AIS has been a real eye opener; the facilities are amazing! Within a single campus they have swimming pools, netball-, basketball- and tennis courts, football-, rugby- and athletics fields, a huge gym, rehab centre, recreational rooms, accommodation blocks and a food hall with a huge variety of delicious food. I’m particularly loving the free hot chocolate machines dotted around everywhere!

On our one day off we headed to the coast for the day. Everyone swam in the sea despite the rain and the fear of sharks. I had spent half of the journey to the beach promising people that there wouldn’t be any sharks and it was ok to swim, so I too was horrified when we spotted fins through the waves. But anxiety quickly turned to excitement when we realised they were dolphins… This was brilliant and for most of the girls it was the first time they had seen dolphins in the wild.

This day was extra special for me as my dad, who lives in New Zealand, was able to come with us to the beach. He had flown over to Oz the previous night to support some of our matches and it’s been really nice having him here because he used to watch all my matches growing up in NZ. The last time I had seen him was in China last August at the World Uni Games.

Tonight we play the last official match against Australia before heading back to the UK tomorrow. We’re not in England for long, though, and next week we head to Italy for the next round of the LEN Champions Cup.

After this we are in Manchester for a while getting ready for the ‘London Prepares’ water polo test event in London from 3–6 May. This is a great opportunity for anyone who didn’t get water polo tickets for the Olympics (and those who did!) to see the Olympic water polo venue and support us in our build-up to the games. It’s a four nation tournament between GB, Hungary, USA and Australia, and we are hoping for a good home crowd. So it would be great to see everyone there! Tickets go on sale to the general public on 15 March but water polo fans can get priority booking from 13 March using the special code here:

http://www.swimming.org/britishswimming/news/water-polo/ticket-offer-for-british-water-polo-fans/12732/#.T1O0JmVdeOU.facebook

Hopefully see you there!

Francesca

Hello and Happy New Year!

I am writing this first blog of 2012 from our hotel in Eindhoven at the European Championships. We have finished the tournament having moved up in the European rankings to seventh, the highest we have ever been. We were hoping to break into the top six but we have had some very competitive matches against the top teams in the world so we have to be pleased with that.

We started the campaign off in Dusseldorf for a few days of training (fighting!) with the German team. I spent most of the time watching from the side, frustrated, while nursing an injured knee. For a while it was possible that I might be flown home instead of carrying on with the team to Eindhoven. Thankfully, the strict rehab plan prescribed by our brilliant physio (I had to ice my knee every 2 hours even through the night!) worked and the swelling went down enough for me to be taped up to play. So, by the time we checked into our gorgeous hotel in Eindhoven the knee was fine and we faced Hungary in the opening match.

Playing Hungary is always a big challenge for us and we let them slip away with some easy goals. Next up we had the Russians and their unstoppable counter attack! Despite this we managed to keep within three goals of them until the final minute when we made a a couple mistakes on attack that were instantly punished at the other end. The final score was still a respectable 15-10.

The last match in our pool was against reigning Olympic Champions, The Netherlands, and their 2000-strong home crowd. The atmosphere was incredible and it was exciting to think that soon we will be playing in front of crowds even bigger than this and everyone will be cheering for us, not against us! We were right in the game and only down by one goal (5-6) at half time, but the Olympic champs were too good for us on this occasion and the final score was 12-6.

This meant our play-off match was against our old friends, the Germans. We had beaten them in the training matches two weeks earlier but we knew it was going to be a close game, and we were right… tied 10-10 at the end of full time. Going into extra time, though, we were confident because the Germans had clearly slowed down throughout the match, while our three months of fitness training was standing us in good stead. We went ahead by three goals in the first three minutes of extra time, scoring on every attack. Germany netted one last goal but the final score was 13-11 to us, moving us up to seventh in Europe.

Tomorrow we return to Manchester for a few weeks of training before we head off to Australia for a training camp. We hosted the Australian National Team in Manchester a couple of years ago so it’s now their turn to return the favour, and a good excuse for us to get out of the freezing UK winter! We will be staying at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra which has incredible facilities. The Aussies are consistently in the top four teams in the world so this will be great preparation for us!

I’m off back to the pool now to watch the Men’s semi finals. The talent of these guys is impressive!

Francesca