27 September
Throughout the Commonwealth Games, Scottish swimmer David Carry will be keeping you updated on life inside the Scottish camp as well as all things swimming in Delhi.
So we’ve arrived in Doha, Qatar. I am part of the British Swimming holding camp based around the Aspire Sporting complex alongside the English, Welsh and four others from the Scottish team.
And what a venue! It is the best sporting facilities I have ever seen on one site. The pool we are using was the venue for the Asian Games in 2006 with a 4,500 seating capacity and diving pit.
In the same building is another 50,000 seat stadium, a full size indoor football pitch, two 25m pools, basketball courts and that’s all I’ve discovered so far. On the same site is a shopping mall with a Venetian-style canal where you can have a gondola ride, an ice rink and indoor theme park with rollercoaster, all of which I’ve so far managed to avoid. It really is unbelievable!
But of course the reason why all these facilities, parks and canals are inside is because we are in the middle of a desert and temperatures just now are around 40C. We’ve spent our whole time in air-conditioning and get a real shock when we step outside, it’s like stepping into an oven.
As we are very much in taper mode most of our time is spent around the hotel trying to relax and rest as much as possible but of course we still manage to occupy ourselves! The main pastime for the guys is FIFA on the PS3 – a very welcome gift from British Gas. Main bragging rights at the moment go to the partnership of James “The Gaming Geek” Goddard and David “The Welsh Wizard” Davies, who are reigning champions from the Majorca camp earlier this year.
We are about to embark upon an individual knock-out competition to find the true individual champion – I’ll keep you posted (unless the Gaming Geek wins again and we decide to keep it quiet).
The other competition going on is the outrageous facial hair some of the guys are sporting. Special mentions go to Liam Tancock and James Goddard for decent beards but the overall winner for most outrageous has to go to my roommate, Lewis Smith! He has a bet on with some of the guys back in Stirling that he can go all the way to the Commonwealth Games – he’s gone seven weeks and now looks like an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s not a great look!
With less than a week to go before swimming begins and only four days before we head into Delhi, you can feel the excitement and anticipation rising. There’s obviously going to be challenges ahead but with such great support staff and a close team, we will be ready for those challenges.
If you have any questions for David, leave them in the comments section below.
Click here to learn more about Scottish aquatics during and after the Commonwealth Games on the Scottish ASA website
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