Jones Looks Forward to Olympic Trials

Next week sees the culmination of four years of hard work and personal sacrifice as Swindon Dolphin swimmer Chris Jones competes at the 2008 British Swimming Championships, aiming not only for success, but for a place in the British Olympic Swimming Team. Jones, the Scottish captain, has clocked up approaching 3,500 hours in the pool and many more hours in the gym since the last Olympic trials, but his fate now lies in well under three minutes of swimming, and in achieving an improvement of less than one second.

It has been a memorable 12 months for Jones. Amongst his most impressive achievements are a gold medal in the 100m breaststroke and a silver in the 50m breaststroke at the 2007 British Championships last March. He subsequently became the 50m breaststroke National Champion in August, recording a Scottish record on his way to gold. Added to this Jones set county records in 33m, 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke events during the 2006/2007 season and claimed short & long course, 200m breaststroke world records in the 25-29 years age group at major Masters’ competitions.

“My main focus approaching these trials is to be stronger and lighter than I have ever been before. I have been using a weight loss programme based on calorie counting for about 4 months and am currently 4 kilograms lighter than my racing weight last year. Combined with the fact that I’m stronger and have been training harder in the pool than ever, I’m hoping this will be the key to me dropping down to the 100m breaststroke Olympic Qualifying time. I have to knock 0.96 of a second off in the heats to achieve this.”