After a very long day on Wednesday, we went to bed and got up reasonably late on Thursday morning (like about 8:30 AM) to get a start for the day. After a quick breakfast of beef noodles, we set out on the road to Shanghai. Shanghai is about 2 hour drive from Hangzhou, but it seems quite a bit longer then that. We finally arrived around 1 PM and checked into our hotel, which conveniently was very close to Pudong-Shanghai Airport. After a quick lunch and a brief rest, we started out on our last visit of the week, The Shanghai Provincial Team.
Negotiating Shanghai traffic can be quite a mind-numbing experience and it took close to 2 hours to reach this facility. Along the way, we acquired Director Sun Weiyi, who was to be our guide. Director Weiyi has quite a resume himself as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Sailing Referee. As we approached the Shanghai Sports Development Facility, the first thing the strikes you is the sheer size and immense magnitude of it. After weaving through many different buildings, we pulled up to this massive building that housed the Aquatics Sports programs. This was very clearly a place where some of the best swimmers in China train and prepare to compete on the World's stage. Featuring two 50-meter facilities and two smaller pools, this place is all about getting faster.
China's National Shanghai Training Facility
Getting the "official tour" of the Shanghai Facility
After some brief introductions and the typical "official tour" of the place, I was introduced to the only other American (or Westerner) I've seen in the past week in the form of Chris Martin. Coach Martin is a high level American-born coach that is currently one of the Chinese National Team coaches. Turn's out, he's from Pennsylvania and we have several past "swimming" people in common so we had some nice discussion. We laughed and joked for a bit, but since he was in the middle of running a practice, our visit was fairly brief. We then were able to look around some more at the facilities and this was a very "high tech" swim place on about the same level as the USA Swimming facility in Colorado Springs. There was a practice going on with Chinese National Team swimmers and there skill was on full display.
Chatting it up with Chinese National Coach Chris Martin
The precision and flexibility of Chinese underwater work is impressive
We also got tours of the strength & conditioning facility and the rowing sport facilities as well. It was a thoroughly satisfying visit and was another "level" of the complex Chinese system that I got to take a peak into. After my 6 days here, I really feel like I was able to get a very good handle on the entire Chinese Swimming Development System and the similarities (and differences) to the American system. We finished off the day with our typical Chinese dinner feast. There were many well wishes and toasts to future ventures and I am quite sure that this trip was the beginning of something wonderful for our program and our swimmers.
Typical Chinese dinner feast
In the coming days, I will be posting some more specific posts about how this trip will be able to help with my own development as a swim coach and how this trip could open the door to future opportunities for our swimmers and other coaches. Also, I want to take a minute to publicly thank the people that made this trip possible. First off, I certainly need to thank our club, and Niagara Swimming, Inc for the assistance getting over to China, but I also must thank Mr. Jianlin Fan and the Wuxi Sports School for their support while in China. Also, a huge "shout out" to my interpreter Holly Tan who was so skillfully able to bridge the significant language barriers that existed. Thanks to all of you.
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