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BRITISH SCHOOL BAHRAIN @ WSG SWIM | YOUR STORIES

Read about the experiences of British School of Bahrain's Bulldogs Swim Team at The World School Swim Championships 2025 in London.

By Trans World Educational Experiences Damien Isaac, British School of Bahrain

DAY ONE - TRAVEL

08 May 2025

The travelling party gathered at Bahrain International Airport at 11pm Wednesday evening for a 2am flight to London. Riding the “Red-Eye”. We were all excited about what lay ahead of us over the next 5 days.

Not only excited to compete on a global scale, to visit London, to swim at the London Aquatic Centre (home of the 2012 Olympic aquatic events), but also to be the first AND only Bahrain school at the World School Swim Championships.

The 7hr overnight GulfAir flight went surprisingly fast, landing at London Heathrow at 7am. It took a while to meet up with our transport, but by 8.30am, we were on our way to the Premier Inn London Stratford Hotel. This was a 1hr 30min clockwise journey on the M25 watching the lush green pastures of the English Countryside whizz by.

We arrived at the hotel…our home for the next four evenings, dropped our bags before taking a walk around the Westfield Shopping Mall, literally next door. We checked ‘Inn’, settled into our rooms, then group in the restaurant for dinner.

The night was drawing in, dinner was finished so before we all retired to our rooms, we had our briefing for the next day. The itinerary included:

8am - Breakfast
9.30am - walk to the London Aquatic Centre (LAC)
10am - Q & A session with a GB Olympic swimmer
11.30am - Familiarisation swim in the 50m pool
1.00pm - Lunch
…freetime

As we travelled overnight, endured a long transfer from the airport to the hotel, had a walk around the mall, dinner and briefing, we were all tired and needed to retire to our rooms. As you can imagine the halls were quiet. There were other travelling teams staying at the same hotel.

BRITISH SCHOOL BAHRAIN @ WSG SWIM | YOUR STORIES

DAY TWO - TRAINING

09 May 2025

The following morning, they slowly appeared from their rooms and made it into the dining hall for breakfast. Long queue formed for the hotplate. Thankfully, there was plenty of choice apart from a cooked breakfast.

Their bellies filled so the brightness and excitement took over as the LAC visit neared. Kit ready to go, we strolled over to the LAC - a mere 10 minute walk…which was extended to nearly 25mins because Mr Isaac missed the signs for the main entrance. We took a walk completely around the Centre, finally realising the main entrance was down some stairs. What was more embarrassing, another team followed us.

We finally made it to the LAC…

Gasps of ‘WOAAHHHHH” and ‘OOOMMMMGGGGGGGG’ was heard around the reception lobby. “Are we swimming in THAT?!?!?!”

We sure are kids!!

What an absolute spectacle to behold.

We took a familiarisation walk of how to get the the ‘BullPen’ for race registration then back up to the seating area for a Question and Answer session with a 2024 Paris Olympics Team GB Open Water Swimmer, Toby Robinson.

27 year old Toby (Tobias, ages 28yrs old) swam the 10km open water competition in the River Seine on 9th August 2024. He placed 14th with a time of 1hr 56m 43s.

He has now retired from Swimming, following a new path of open water cleanliness. While swimming in the Seine, he found it very dirty and polluted, therefore now campaigning for cleaner waterways so swimmers may enjoy the open water activities.

Now it's time to get in the pool. We had 1 hour allocated for us to train and familiarise ourselves with the 50m pool: the atmosphere, the length, the depth, the pool markings, backstroke flags and dive blocks.

The swim consisted of a warm up (long stretching strokes), a ‘switch-on’ set (very high intensity 15m sprints), main set (working through the strokes of various distance and intensities), ‘off the block’ plus finish sprint set (Competitive starts off the blocks with a short sprint finish the length to a turn return by building speed into the last 10m for a sprint finish), and completing the hour with a cool down.

DAY TWO - TOURISM

09 May 2025

First swim complete, back to the hotel for lunch, followed by a trip into London: Walking through Westfield Mall to the tube station, experiencing the hustle and bustle of London Transport, making our way to Waterloo Station.

Spending a little time at Waterloo Station, we moved to London Bridge to get a photo with Tower Bridge as the background.

Walking through the South Bank we came across the beloved bear, Paddington, as he warmly greets visitors to London with a doff of his hat. In celebration of the new Paddington in Peru film and Paddington becoming Visit London’s first-ever Welcome Ambassador, you can spot the colourful portrait of Paddington at Sutton Walk outside Waterloo station.

Hidden by the tall buildings and narrow streets, we looked right down the next street and we saw…..

……The London Eye!!

At 135m, The London Eye is the world’s largest cantilevered observation wheel. It was conceived and designed by Marks Barfield Architects and was launched in 2000. It has won over 85 awards for national and international tourism, outstanding architectural quality and engineering achievement. In fact, it has become the UK’s most popular paid for visitor attraction.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to board the Eye, as we had dinner booked at the hotel.

Next on the trip was to cross Westminster Bridge (opened on 18 November 1750), walk past Big Ben, turn right into Parliament Street /Whitehall into Trafalgar Square, onto Charing Cross to return “home”.

Along the way, we encountered the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, the Cenotaph, statue of Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Field Marshal Earl Haig Memorial, Horse Guards and into Trafalgar Square.

While in Trafalgar Square. We asked if anyone knew what Trafalgar Square represented and who was on top of Nelson’s Column. Myself and Ms Gray were met with blank faces, then a voice shouted “Napoleon!!”

More underground experiences back to the hotel for dinner, evening briefing before turning in for the night.

DAY THREE - 50m POOL

10 May 2025

This is why we were here…RACING…with different swimmers from different schools across the world.

Early breakfast today to get to warm up at the pool by 8.00am. First race was at 9.00am.

Today's events included:

200m Freestyle
100m Backstroke
100m Breaststroke
100m Freestyle
100m Butterfly
200m Individual Medley
4x50m Freestyle Relay
4x50m Medley Relay
50m “Skins” Event (an Elimination type of event)

There were some astonishing swims from our Bulldogs dropping time like it was for fun. Each swimmer going through the process of gearing up, going to registration, visualisation, focussed on the job in hand, loosening off/stretching.

After a long day at the pool, we headed home for dinner, evening briefing and an early night.

DAY FOUR - 25m POOL

11 May 2025

Bring on the day of the fast and furious short course swims.

Early breakfast again today to get to warm up at the pool by 8.00am. First race was at 9.00am.

Today's events included:

50m Backstroke
50m Breaststroke
50m Freestyle
50m Butterfly
100 Individual Medley
50m “Skins” Event
4x50 Mixed Freestyle Medley
4x50 Mixed Medley Relay
WSG Nations Cup 4x50 Freestyle Relay

Again some astonishing swims from our Bulldogs dropping more time. Gearing up, going to registration, visualisation, focussing on the job in hand, loosening off/stretching was now well practiced and part of the plan.

The Nations Cup was a real highlight for us. This was the first time it was held in the WSG (Swim) event. Each country (due to qualification swims) had to select 4 swimmers from the country and represent. As we were the only school to represent Bahrain, we had the pleasure of selecting our 4 best freestyle swimmers to compete.

Liv Zuidwijk
Jean Tomballe
Elissa Fihani
William Balzano

None of them had swam that fast before…all breaking their own PB’s within the relay.

A truly great climax to a great day of racing.

Another long day at the pool, we headed home for dinner, evening briefing and an early night.

DAY FOUR - EVENT STATISTICS

11 May 2025

The results of our swimmers are as follows:

William Balzano - 3-time Finalist, 3 Sliver, 2 Bronze, 1 of 9 PBs
Elissa Fihani - 3-time Finalist, 6 of 7 PBs (of which 2 were Double PB’s)
Liz Zuidwijk - 2-time Finalist, 6 of 7 PBs (of which 2 were Double PB’s)
Jean Tomballe - 4 of 4 PB’s
Thea Hill - 1-time finalist, 3 of 5 PB’s
Juliette Anderson - 2 of 4 PB’s
Eva Von Mertens - 1-time Finalist, 3 of 5 PB’s
Lucas Moreno - 2-time Finalist, 1 Bronze, 6 of 8 PB’s (of which 1 was a Double PB’s)
Meka Smurl - 3 of 4 PB’s
Alexander Grieve - 4 of 4 PB’s
Victor Tomballe - 1-time Finalist, 5 of 5 PB’s, one of which was over 10 seconds!

Event Statistics:

Total number of swimmers in the WSG Event - in excess of 500 from 40 schools (UK and Global)
Total number of BSB Bulldogs individual entries - 44
Number of Finals - 12
Skin Swims - 5 from 2 swimmers, William Balzano (2nd) & Lucas Moreno (Semi Final)
Total Individual Swims - 59
Total number of PB’s 42 (>70%)
Number of Double PB’s - 4
Average Time Dropped per Race - 4 seconds
Number of DQ’s - 1
Golds - 0
Silvers - 3
Bronzes - 3
Top Ten Placings - 17

DAY FIVE - FREE TIME & TRAVEL

12 May 2025

Competition over, we had a whole day to spend in London before travelling to the airport for our 10pm flight back. That meant a team trip to the London Eye, where an excited team went up in the ‘Eye’ whilst Ms Gray and Mrs Smurl waved them all off with ice creams in hand in the London sunshine! We then walked over the bridge and to St James’ Park where everyone loved walking in the grass, feeding the geese and climbing trees! We were then really lucky to see the rehearsal for the King’s birthday party and saw a number of marching bands and troops, which was an amazing sight to witness!

After making it back to the hotel just in time to get our coach back to the airport, followed by a fabulous coach tour of London on our way back, to a point where we had the driver giggling to himself. The coach journey took us through the centre of London while we were picking out sights with the help of Google Maps with some ‘did you know that…’s’. I’m delighted to say we sourced ‘JellyCats’ at the airport to top off the trip, mission accomplished! Needless to say the flight back was much quieter than the flight there!

SOME THANK YOUS

A huge thank you to our travelling team of supporters, Mrs Smurl, Mrs Von Mertens and Mrs Zuidwijk: your help fetching lunches, sending over goodies to sustain our energy levels and ‘team mom’ support was fantastic and very much appreciated by us coaches and swimmers!

The World School Games was a complete experience for the swimmers, the coaches, the travelling support and those that managed to watch from afar. Many members of the swimmers' families logged on to the World School Games YouTube Live Stream. The feedback was on the lines of “it was just like watching the Olympics!”

To World School Games Events: Your creativity, your vision, the set up, support and administration and execution of the event was top notch. Very professional to make the swimmers’ experience as Elite as possible.

To the Premier Inn London Stratford: Your location (attached to Westfield Mall, on the Elizabeth Line reaching from Reading to centre of London), standard of rooms, professionalism while hugely under pressure, your service and especially the chefs was exceptional.

To British School of Bahrain: This was an amazing experience for our swimmers and also a measure of their performance to other ‘school’ global swimmers. We, the coaches, feel this is a must in the swimming calender and to explore the other events WSG that are available.

Lastly….

The Swimmers: Thank you for being you. Thank you for the time and effort you have put into your training. It has been a difficult year with very few events and swim meets. To continue to train with no goal destroys the soul, but you all kept going. As a travelling party, various organisations told us how well behaved and how well you represented BSB and Bahrain. You were a credit to the school. Well done all of you.

SUBMIT YOUR STORIES!

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Simply drop our media team an email with your school name, which event you attended, and as much detail about your day-by-day experiences as you like.

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BRITISH SCHOOL BAHRAIN @ WSG SWIM | YOUR STORIES

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