Olympic rowing star Tom Solesbury visits Central Foundation Boys' School
07/11/11
On Wednesday 2nd November British Rowing star and Olympian Tom Solesbury visited Central Foundation Boys’ School and spent an inspiring afternoon with IC6 and Central Foundation Year 11 students.
Firstly, Tom spoke about his motivation and ambition to win Gold in the 2012 Olympics, having come 13th in Beijing. The students were fascinated to hear about his training regime which involves 3 sessions of training daily, starting at 6.30 every day. He consumes a massive 6200 calories a day, including 2 breakfasts to give him the energy to do that level of training. Tom has managed to travel extensively since much of the training takes place overseas. Tom explained that if a footballer has a bad game, then they can repair the damage with the match the following Saturday whereas rowers have to wait months between competitions. He took the students through the unlucky series of injuries that he has had in his time as a UK Rower which are now all behind him as he seeks to get gold in 2012.
After the inspiring talk it was time to see how quickly Tom could row 100 metres on the rowing machine. In order to do this several students and teachers posted their times in front of a lively audience. Mr May, Mr Miah, Mr Meadows and Mr Dilley all set times of less than 20 seconds. The fastest students were Joseani Baptista (Year 12) who set an impressive time of 16.8 seconds and Dylan Ebengo (Year 11) with 17.4 seconds. Tom managed an incredible 14.3 seconds without breaking a sweat or (thankfully) getting an injury.
IC6 is grateful to Tom and to Slaughter and May for organising this unique event. We wish Tom all the best for London 2012 and hope that when he next visits he is wearing a Gold medal around his neck!
Highbury Grove School,
Highbury Fields School
Cental Foundation Boys' School
St Aloysius' College