Sienna Robinson and Phoebe Cooper underline potential of City of Sheffield at British Swimming Championships

Forty-two athletes will have represented the City of Sheffield Swimming Club by the time the last race is contested over the six-day meet of the British Championships at their home pool of Ponds Forge.

They already have one medallist – 18-year-old, Sienna Robinson claiming a silver in the 50m breaststroke exactly one year after suffering a ruptured appendix when qualifying for the 2022 final.

Robinson goes for gold in the 100m breaststroke on Saturday night while her 15-year-old team-mate Phoebe Cooper, from Stocksbridge, races in a high-calibre 200m individual medley final on an action-packed final evening on Sunday.

It is an exciting time for the club, and in particular coach Mike Taylor, who has seen Team Steel as they call themselves and the venue blossom just two years after Ponds Forge was mothballed during the pandemic.

"A lot of clubs struggled through Covid but we made a big change in the club by reassessing the structure, we streamlined the programme and introduced more groups,” Taylor told The Yorkshire Post.

"We got another university programme in that underpins our performance group. There’s 24 in that group and 20 of them qualified for the British Championships.

“We’d been covering over cracks for a while, we were letting the club float by. With the demographics that were happening we were going to lose members, which a lot of clubs did, so we made that conscious effort to work with the universities.

"And to have 42 swimmers competing this week, 18 finalists on the first day alone, shows the progress being made. I think we’re one of the best-represented clubs in the country at these championships.”

City of Sheffield Swimming Club survived through the temporary closure of Ponds Forge by decamping their entire schedule of sessions to the swimming pool at King Edward School.

While grateful for that fallback, there’s nothing like the facility at Ponds Forge to train and compete in.

"We are really privileged as a programme, there’s not many venues like this around the country,” said Taylor.

"When you get a kid that walks in the door their words are always ‘wow’ when they see that 50m pool. The venue sells itself and the partnership with Ponds Forge and the council ever since we got back through the doors has been brilliant. They’ve both supported the club, giving us extra pool time to facilitate the new group, and that has helped us to push the swimming programme on.”

As the action continues into the weekend at Ponds Forge, Ben Proud – who completed a historic treble in 2022 of world, commonwealth and European titles in 2022 – will look to reclaim the men’s 50m freestyle title from Thursday night’s 100m champion, Lewis Burras.

Abbie Wood and Katie Shanahan are favourites in the women’s 200m individual medley but Leeds’s Leah Schlosshan will have a say as she looks to build on her European Junior gold medal over the distance, in a race that features Sheffield teenager Cooper who is hoping to qualify for the European Youth Olympics.

"Phoebe has a lot of potential and is a really good kid,” said Taylor. Duncan Scott and Tom Dean are set for a titanic men’s 200m freestyle that closes the schedule on Sunday evening with places on the line at the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, this summer.

On Friday night they had two more medallists, Aaron Fox winning gold in the men’s 100m butterfly and Annabelle Wilkinson claiming a bronze in the women’s 200m backstroke.