Blog guest: Andrea di Nino

Andrea di Nino is the principal coach and the president of the ADN Swimming Project, that aims to establish a high quality and level of complete training service to the top swimmers and in that way help them achieve top results at the most prestigious international competitions. Andrea’s swimmers were Milorad Cavic and Yevgeny Korotyshkin. Both swimmers won Olympic medals under Andrea.

Today, Andrea coaches South African swimmer and the Olympic champion Chad le Clos who caused controversy when he announced that he would leave his previous coach Graham Hill and that he wanted to use ADN to prepare for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. Andrea di Nino, as a Swimming Dad #Blog guest, explains how much he gained and lost by having a top class professional swimming coach career, and who has a more difficult job the coach or the swimmer.

As a top-level coach how much did professional sport give to you and how much take

away?

Personally, I dedicated the last 15 years of my life to it, including Sundays and holidays...if you are a coach you have a different schedule compared to the "normal" people :-) but at the same time I have some great memories - Rome 2009, London 2012 and Gold Coast 2018 just to mention some of them - and above all I had the chance to meet great people (swimmers - coaches - officials) and travel around the world.

How do you handle the stress at the most important competitions of the season?

You try to learn how to deal with it year by year, and now it seems to be easier to control the stress when I’m 45 then some 10 years ago. However, at the same time those last 5-8 minutes before the race begins, when you are with the swimmer in the waiting room, are the most intense ones. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I`m still coaching... It’s hard to find anything more exciting than this!!!

Who has a more difficult job, the athlete or the coach?

It’s really hard to answer this. The swimmer probably has the more difficult one but at the same time he/she can release his stress/emotions during the race and, very rightfully, receive all the credits for his/her performance. Most of the time, the coach has a very particular job to "mask" his/her emotions and control the nerves during the season and especially during the competition.