With the British Swimming Championships kicking off next week, the crowds in attendance at Ponds Forge are preparing to witness more medal-winning moments, as well as a host of Olympic and world champions in action.
Among those will be backstroke specialist Luke Greenbank, who became a world champion in 2019, won two medals at his maiden Olympic Games in 2021 and then secured a podium place at each of last year's three major internationals.
The 25-year-old has seen considerable success since moving to the Loughborough Performance Centre under the guide of coach Mel Marshall – earning him a medal haul that includes 11 medals across the four major international competitions, including that aforementioned world title as part of the history-making Men's 4x100m Medley Relay in Gwangju.
Speaking after one of the final training sessions for the Loughborough athletes before British Championship competition kicks off on Tuesday, Greenbank gave a recap of how things have been going since his last international outing at Melbourne’s World Short Course Championships in December 2022.
“We started off with a training camp in Australia, which is obviously a great place to train. We’re really grateful and happy with how the camp went. We’ve been in a really big block of training recently so in season performances haven't been amazing, but after a bit of rest I’m really looking forward to racing at Champs," he said.
With 2022 being one of the most intense periods of racing that our athletes have ever faced, Greenbank spoke candidly about the effect this had, as well as how he’s used it to his advantage ahead of the coming year.
“I think competition is really useful. Once you get used to that environment, it just becomes second nature. Last year it was very tough in terms of the back-to-back competitions, but I think I’ve taken a lot of experience from it - not just in terms of racing, but how to handle myself in back-to-back competitions as well.
“I think because obviously we spend quite a lot of time together, the morale in the group is very high and very good. What we have done really well in the past few years is we’ve created a culture where everyone's happy and that leads to the successful competitions that we've seen over the last few years. Just having that great exposure to people you race against, but who are also your teammates, that's really useful.”
With the racing calendar returning to a more conventional schedule in 2023, we asked Greenbank how his training changes towards a more linear structure, and whether he prefers the more traditional meet calendar.
“We’ve got to build on what we've worked on for the past few years. It's always a little bit more difficult on the second or third time through, so it's more looking at those finer details and smaller gains from training," he explained.
“I think we've still got to maintain what we've been doing in terms of the sets that we've been doing and the and the output we get from those sessions.”
For now, the focus is on seeing the experience of recent years and the hard work put in over this season's training come to fruition in Sheffield, as Luke looks ahead to the British Swimming Championships - the key selection meet for this year's World Championships - and what lies beyond.
“I'm just looking forward to racing. I’ve got no expectations really – I just want to go in and do my best. For me, the objective of Champs is to try to make the team, so hopefully I’ll come away from that and then move on from there," he said.
“I think every year before an Olympics is sort of a stepping stone. What we want from this year is just to move on and improve from last year. Obviously we got that racing exposure with three competitions last year, so there’s a lot to learn from that.
"There’s been some good and some bad experiences, but we've got to move on and use this as an opportunity to get better and almost practice for 2024.”
For more information ahead of the British Swimming Championships, including tickets and start lists, head to our "What's On?" page.