Swimming Carnival

The kid’s school have an annual swimming carnival and there’s quite a lot of razzamatazz around it, with the classes divided into teams and pitted against each other.

Australians take their swimming pretty seriously – borne out of the fact that they used to dominate the first week of the Olympics where activities take place in the pool. They have a proud tradition and Dawn Fraser, Ian Thorpe and Libby Trickett are absolute household names in Australia. Last May we'd gone along to watch Australia's Olympic hopefuls in a really fabulous (free) afternoon.

Audrey competed in her first swimming carnival this year and as a VPD (very proud Dad) I went along to watch and cheer her on. The seven year olds were expected to race in the 50m breast stroke (a long way for many adults) but Audrey did fabulously coming in 4th place out of 6.

I actually had to bite my tongue a bit as the first three girls quite clearly launched themselves into the water on “Take your marks!” thereby giving themselves a good 5m start and I’m sure Audrey would have collected a Gold Medal by default if it had been an Olympic final. She swam hard to catch them, but couldn't quite make it.

Despite my VPD ways I decided against launching myself into the water and declaring that they call the errant girls back. Well done Audrey – we’ll work on those race dives for next year.

Audrey's breast stroke (wish I'd done a video to give it justice)

School swimming carnival

Eli and his mates