Covid 19 coronavirus: Rotorua siblings invoke Kiwi ingenuity for swim training

A pair of Rotorua siblings are proof you don't have to abandon your favourite hobbies in the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown - all you need is classic Kiwi ingenuity.

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Competitive swimmers Dani, 13, and Lucas Green, 10, who swim for Te Arawa Swimming, usually spend much of their free time at the Rotorua Aquatic Centre training.

During the lockdown it is no longer an option. So, they put their heads together to come up with a solution.

"Obviously the kids are competitive swimmers and after that first week of isolation they were starting to get a bit twitchy," their dad Steve Green said.

"So, the challenge to them was literally 'if you want to swim, why don't you make a swimming pool?'. I was thinking maybe something small but I came home from work one day and they'd started digging this pool that was 3m by 2m.

"I came back the next day and they'd literally dug the whole thing, it's a metre and a half deep."

While not long enough to swim lengths, the children have set up a harness attached to bungy cords which allows them to swim in one spot, much like running on a treadmill.

Dani said she loved swimming so it had been a big relief to be able to still do some sort of training. Their at-home training facility took a little bit of trial and error.

"I'm usually at the pool nearly every day, I've been missing it a lot. At the start we grabbed a tarpaulin and some wood and tried to make one we didn't have to dig. That failed, so we asked the neighbours if we could borrow their pool but it was all dirty.

"So, I called dad and he said 'yep, you can go dig a hole'. We do have one leak which we have to reseal, otherwise it's good. It works really well, except I can't do backstroke. We're using it once or twice a day."

Steve said one of his favourite parts of the project was seeing his children work so well together.

"They can quite comfortably swim at a decent clip and not go anywhere. They knew what they wanted to do, they knew how to get there but I honestly didn't expect them to have the ambition to do what they did.

"The other side is the teamwork between them. Normally they'd be tearing each other apart after the first day but even to this day they're out there twice a day, doing their training.

"The Aquatic Centre is usually our second home, I think Saturday's the only day we're not there. This project has absolutely taken the edge off for them."

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website