Cork swimming club looks to store 50m pool as it tries to secure site

A Cork swimming club is appealing for in securing storage space for its Olympic size 50m swimming pool as it moves to secure a site for what would be one of the city’s most ambitious sports projects in decades.

The project is on track to be completed within the next two years, though its backers are confident it could be ready well before that, giving Cork swimmers the perfect opportunity to repeat or better the achievements of Ireland’s Olympic swimmers from this Summer, Daniel Wiffen and Mona McSharry, at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

Dolphin Swimming Club chairman Giuseppe Whelan told The Echo that the swimming pool, which is in kit form and sitting on 36 pallets, has been in storage since the club purchased it earlier this year.

“A friend was storing it as a favour but now we need to find new storage – it won’t take up too much space, around twice the size of a domestic garage,” he said.

“Plans for the swimming pool are moving forward, we need to secure a site and then we can start on the design phase and that will bring us far as seeking planning permission,” said Mr Whelan. 

“It’s all very positive so far but the planning process can encounter setbacks and hiccups which could, but hopefully, won’t delay it.” The 50m swimming pool was sourced in Birmingham where it had been used as a practice pool for the Commonwealth Games when it was held in that city. It’s a six lane pool but the club plan to extend it with four more lanes.

“If you think of the rectangle you need to extend that rectangle to the right or the left to add in the extra lanes and the way it works is each section is a one metre by two metre galvanised steel piece and you slot those in and a specialist company comes along and seals in the whole thing with a specialised resin which sets hard like you would have with tiles – and then you have your established pool.

“We know all the costs associated with that, for putting the pool in place, for putting in place but it’s all on pause until we can secure the land and do the detailed design for that land, positioning and all those sorts of things and then put in for planning.” 

Mr Whelan explained that while Dolphin Swimming Club were spearheading the project, the swimming pool would be a resource for all the swimming clubs and all the swimmers in Cork.

He also anticipates that the 50m pool will be essential as other pools in the city will need to be refurbished in the next few years. “At some point in time, some of these pools will need to be refurbished, with significant investment, to keep them going for another period of years – the problem is that when you do that, you have to take those pools out of circulation and people can’t use them.

“For clubs like us, it’s absolutely disastrous because it impacts swimmers for the whole year,” he said. “Having a new pool like the 50m pool in Cork gives us so much more headspace and flexibility to allow swimmers to keep on swimming as some of these pools are refurbished.

“We don’t want it to be seen as a Dolphin only thing – this pool is going to be so big it will facilitate all the clubs and all the swimmers in Cork.”