Last night I took my first steps towards becoming a swimming judge (or White Walker, as I understand they’re sometimes known these days).
The first session was partly an introduction to the training and paperwork, followed by completing the race timing element of the training. Nothing particularly complex there.
We started with a stopwatch test, which we were told takes place in each briefing. By sheer chance I stopped my watch on exactly the same time as the tutor. After a little more discussion we went poolside and spent most of the rest of the evening timing swimmers from the host club. Nothing at all strenuous. We did have one or two failures at first when people weren’t ready because they were still transcribing times, but other than that it was all quite relaxed.
Next up is videos covering the rules for each stroke and race, after which we’ll start going to galas.