With six months to go before the Manchester 2023 Para Swimming World Championships, Swimming Canada’s Paralympic program is stepping up its preparation with an intensive business trip Down Under.

Departing Canada for Australia in late January, a delegation of 16 athletes and eight staff first headed to the University of Sunshine Coast for a two-week train and race camp.

The group then travelled to Melbourne, were they were joined by five more team members – including two athletes – for the season-opening WPS World Series event scheduled for Feb. 17-19.

Parallel to the international meet, five Canadian swimmers were set to undertake a classification review.

Wayne Lomas, Swimming Canada’s associate director of high performance and Para swimming national coach, stressed the importance of finding the ideal environment to kick off the pre-Paralympics year.

“The USCfacility was chosen as it is host to a fully integrated high performance program that has OLY and PLY national team members, Olympians and Paralympians and world championship medallists,” he said. “Naturally, the temperature and dedicated training environment is the key. And always finishing up with a competition to track progress and evaluate learnings is important.

“Each member of our team has their own goals, with preparation for the Bell Canadian Swimming Trials (March 28 – April 2 in Toronto), Manchester, the Parapan Am Games in Santiago in November and, ultimately, Paris 2024 being the key.”

Jean-Michel Lavallière is one of the Canadian coaches in Australia. The recently-appointed head coach of Montreal’s High Performance Centre – Quebec cites three main objectives for the Sunshine Coast camp.

“Firstly, increase the training load to better prepare the fine-tuning period that will come before Trials in March in Toronto.

“This kind of camp also helps strengthen the bond between our swimmers, the coaching staff and the integrated support team. Since swimmers spend the majority of their time together, it allows them to better support each other during difficult times, because they know exactly what is going on with their teammates.

“Finally, I believe that such a camp helps to better prepare swimmers for the uncertainties of international competitions. They develop their autonomy, their ability to adapt, and open up to new cultures.”

Putting on his HPC-Quebec hat, Lavallière was impressed with what he saw during the two-week camp.

“One of the aspects I liked the most was the way our swimmers embraced each of the challenges that I threw at them. The group kept a positive attitude despite the fatigue and they challenged each other to swim faster and faster.”

The former Paralympian also had nothing but praise for the University of Sunshine Coast.

“The hospitality from USC and the Paralympic and Olympic performance hubs was great. They shared their training philosophy and their vision of swimming with us without any filters. There are definitely some of their ideas that I’d like to explore when we get back home.”

The season-opening WPS World Series event runs from Friday to Sunday at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre.

Results and live streaming are available through the following links: RESULTS / STREAMING