Congratulations to Roberto Pavoni and Daniel Fogg on their selection for the Olympics.

20-year-old Roberto from Shenfield claimed two places in the GB Olympic squad at the British Championships at the Aquatics Centre in Stratford this week.

Waltham Forrest’s Daniel Fogg also qualified for the 1500m with a time of 14 minutes 55.30 seconds

Essex swimming send their best wishes for their selection and wish them well in the competition.

Daniel Fogg was bought up through the Waltham Forest Gators learn to swim scheme.

He entered their Club night program at 8 yrs and by the age of 9 was accepted into the junior squad program and competed at his first Essex Championships. By 12 yrs he was training in the Gators Top squad and had attained medal placings at ECASA in the 200 fly, 400 & 800 free.

By age 13/14 Daniel was attending all of Top squads 10 weekly sessions giving him 20 hrs per week in the pool thus showing total commitment to his swimming journey.

Waltham Forest had a large turn over of Head Coaches during Daniels younger career until in 2002 Mike Bush was appointed .

Daniel by now was winning Gold medals at ECASA in all Freestyle events except the sprints and also the 400 IM and 200 Fly with a string of Silver and Bronze in others , with the same successes at Regional Championships.2003 saw Daniel win his first medal at National Youth Championships in Sheffield with a Bronze in the now favoured 1500 freestyle.

Although never a sprinter Dan swam the anchor leg in both the 4 X 100 free relay & 4 X 100 Medley relay at the same Chamionships to gain gold in both.

This success earned him a place on the newly formed British swimming training program along with three other Waltham Forest Swimmers.This program had been put together by the then new British swimming Performance director Bill Sweetnam. The aims were to gather the best youth swimmers together for 6 different weekend training camps around the UK. Different groups of swimmers in Dans case the distance freestylers training together to feed off each other.

The British championships at Manchester 2005 saw Daniel in the Final of the 1500 as one of only two junior swimmers who were both competing for the ‘one’ place at this event for the forthcoming European junior Championships. He swam a very controlled race to beat his Rival in a very narrow 1.4 sec lead thus securing his ticket.

Having competed at Euro juniors and finished a very creditable 10th he returned to UK nationals and gained finals in all he entered with Silver medal place in 2.

The following season saw Daniel move up to Loughborough University but as is often the case the particular training did not help him with even some of the home Waltham Forest boys swimming faster. With his usual resolve he kept working until a stroke of luck found him in Coach Kevin Renshaws squad and he never looked back.

2008 he qualified for Beiging Olympics although unfortunately he was taken out in a swim off.

This truly shows what you need for success, a swimmer qualifies for the Olympics gets knocked back and still goes back to training the next day.

2010 Qualifies for Commonwealth Games and wins the Bronze medal in Delhi.

As we saw at Stratford Daniel has now qualified for London 2012 with a 14.55 at the 1500 free finally the best of the British Distance swimmers.

This should be a message to all Essex Swimmers of what can be achieved if you have the commitment and resolve.