In the large outdoor pool of the Saint-Nicolas swimming pool, Tania, blue cap on her head, does the lengths. The 13-year-old Ukrainian doubles all the other swimmers, under the watchful eye of her trainer Léa Pineau. “She’s a very good swimmer, she has very good times“, underlines his coach. Tania fled the war and her hometown of Dnipro for Mayenne, where she arrived with her mother on March 14. The teenager joined the Laval swimming club, Stade Lavallois Natation, like a fish in water.
Seven workouts per week
“She is very tall, with a physique conducive to swimming, adds his trainer. She has aquatic qualities.“Léa Pineau has been a swimming coach for ten years, including six in Laval. The coach is impressed with his new recruit. “She arrived from Ukraine with a totally different way of working from ours, but she completely accepted what I wanted to put in place for her. And that impresses me.”
– Julien Provoyeur
In Ukraine, the young swimmer no longer went to school to devote herself entirely to swimming: she trained twelve to thirteen times a week ! In Laval, the program has changed somewhat: only seven training sessions per week. “It was very complicated at the beginning, explains Léa Pineau, because Tania came with the aim of only swimming. So, on the first day, there was a lot of misunderstanding because we don’t have the same vision of sport in France and in Ukraine. But gradually, it’s relaxed.“
“She gives 100%”
However, there remains a difficulty: the language barrier. Tania speaks neither French nor English. His coach had to find tips to explain the sessions. His secret: a whiteboard and lots of mimes. “I started by writing words in Russian to try to do the translation, then I used swimming vocabulary in Russian and English. But it didn’t work out very welllaughs Léa Pineau. So, we started with the classic way of working: I write in French on the board and gradually Tania knows the words. Afterwards, I show him what to do, like the others.”
Since, Tania works hard, despite the context in her country at war. “She’s very strong about that. assures Lea Pineau. _I even think that training does him good. In any case, what I see is that when she trains, she is really 100% into it. I don’t notice any mood swings or physical changes during training.” The goal for Léa and Tania is now to qualify for the French championships open to foreign swimmers. According to her coach, the young athlete has every chance!