Potential Olympian Tom Neill and two Rackley Centenary team mates invited to elite camps

Potential Olympian Tom Neill and two of his fellow swimming internationals from the Rackley Centenary Swim squad will be at Swimming Australia specialist training camps this week.

Potential Olympian Tom Neill and two of his fellow swimming internationals from the Rackley Centenary Swim squad will be at Swimming Australia specialist training camps this week.

Neill, Bronte Job and Louis Townsend will be pitting their skills against the best in the business.

The emerging Neill will be training at the middle freestyle distance camp alongside Australian Dolphins Mack Horton, Jack McLoughlin and Kyle Palmer.

Tom Neill at last year’s the GPS swimming carnival.

The Brookfield resident said it was “pretty exciting to go head to head’’ with his high class peers.

“It will be exciting to push each other to somewhere we did not think we can go. It is a chance to see how good you are,’’ Neill said.

NEILL A BORN LEADER

Townsend, who like Neill is a St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace old boy, is at the freestyle sprint camp in Adelaide, the same location as Neill’s middle distance camp.

The 2017 world swimming championships representative from Kelvin Grove was confident he was set to swim to his peak performance in 2020.

“We are confident in my ability. It is all about doing my best. I can’t control anyone else,’’ Townsend said.

“We had states (titles) at the end of last year when I was going almost at my PBs

“Then we had a camp earlier this year with Bond and Australia reps as well and I was getting on top of them pretty regularly.’’

Rackley Centenary international swimmer Louis Townsend, a Terrace old boys wbo lives at Kelvin Grove.

The 22-year-old mixed it with the best of them at last year’s selection trials, finishing fifth in the 100m freestyle and sixth in the hotly contested 100m breaststroke.

He then went and competed at US opens where he made a host of finals.

Neill and Job were junior world championships medallists last year and were eligible for junior worlds again this year.

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“It (winning multiple junior world championship medals) was one of the highlights (of 2019) but now there are bigger and better things and I am looking to move forward,’’ Neill said.

The trio were all as fit as a fiddle, helped by a 10 day Rackley-Bond Uni training camp which at one stage featured the trainer of movie star Chris Hemsworth as a special guest.

Tom Neill getting onto the blocks while swimming for Terrace last year.

“It was really challenging. It was a lot of swimming, but it was fun to be with Rackley and Bond,’’ Job said.

Neill added: “Bond have some pretty good middle distance freestylers that I was able to have a race with and at the end of the day it was good training and a good experience.’’

Originally published as Potential Olympian Tom Neill and two Rackley Centenary team mates invited to elite camps