SWIM Ireland has appointed a new Head Coach for its high performance centre at the UL Arena, with Lars Humer set to take up the role from the beginning of next week.
New Zealand native Humer has worked as a high performance swimming coach in Britain for the past 13 years, coaching Olympic and Paralympic swimmers during his time in the role.
“I’m looking forward to the challenge of working with a new group of swimmers. Swim Ireland has a great structure in place already and I’m excited by the prospect of working within that structure,” said the newly-installed coach.
Humer will replace Ronald Claes as Head Coach at UL after the Belgian was controversially removed from the position in September. University Arena officials had been seeking a coach of similar global renown to Claes and Dave Mahedy, Director of Sport at UL, expressed his satisfaction at the appointment of Humer.
Mahedy said: “We are delighted to welcome Lars to Limerick and we look forward to working together with Lars and Swim Ireland in the future”.
Swim Ireland Chief Executive Sarah Keane also gave her firm backing to the new high performance coach.
“We are thrilled to welcome Lars to the Swim Ireland team. He is the right person to succeed Ronald Claes as we move forward into a new Olympic Cycle with a new high performance strategy. We believe Lars has the passion and experience to help Irish swimmers develop and deliver results at European and world level,” she said.
The addition of a respected high performance coach is a welcome boost for UL after it emerged that Swim Ireland was considering downgrading its status from a high performance centre to a satellite training hub as part of a major overhaul.
The governing body’s plans included the relocation of its elite swimmers to the National Aquatic Centre in Dublin, with Olympic swimmer Grainne Murphy having already moved back to her native Wexford after spending six years living in Castletroy and training in UL.
