Australian Olympic gold medallist Alicia Coutts (front) meets Cobargo Swimming Club president Craig O’Meara, his wife Julie and their daughters (from left) Sophie, Ruby, Ivy, Fiona, Evelyn, Vanessa and Naomi.
YOUNG members at the Cobargo Swimming Pool were treated to a special visitor on Saturday.
2012 Olympic Games gold medallist Alicia Coutts spent more than five hours at the pool, having a great time with the young locals.
Coutts, 25, was one of the standouts in the pool at the London Games for Australia, collecting five medals.
She won gold in the 4x100 women’s freestyle relay, picked up silver in the 200m individual medley, 4x200 women’s freestyle relay and 4x100 medley relay, and bronze in the 100m butterfly.
On Saturday, Coutts signed various bits and pieces, chatted with everyone in between swimming, watched the kids in their races and handed out ribbons for the Cobargo carnival.
All the children were given the chance to inspect her Olympic medals.
Before the championship began, Coutts got all the participants to do stretching exercises with her and she also swam in numerous races with various children, which was a great thrill for them to swim with a gold medallist.
Listening intently to everything that Coutts had to say were Eliza-Jane Norris and Jorja Moore of the Cobargo Swimming Club, who are both are swimming at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre tomorrow at the Speed Sprints State Finals.
Eliza-Jane is the youngest member of the South Eastern Swimming Association (SESA) team.
Also on the SESA team swimming at the titles tomorrow are Meika and Keira Hoyland from the Bega swimming club.
Cobargo club president Craig O’Meara worked on getting Coutts to head to Cobargo after a number of the young club members met her at the Narooma pool last year.
Coutts was one of a contingent of star swimmers who came down from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics.