I believe that they do manage to touch the water too now, but only if there is time available.
Crystal Palace is the one and only diving centre for the whole of London, its’ not easy to have the space for training so I believe that dry training is also a necessity to make up for the lack of opportunities.
And when Crystal Palace closed for removal of asbestos the dry training was all they could do.

The Amateur Swimming Association initiative “flip and fun”, also carried out in our borough revolves around having kids jumping on mattresses to introduce them to diving and identify those that may be worth training in the hope that some Olympic champion emerges. This is an artificial promotion of a sport that doesn’t exist anymore because of the lack of facilities. if there were opportunities to dive in pools they wouldn’t have to do this.
And even if kids learn to dive on mattresses but then there are no pools where they can do it for the rest of their life then what’s the meaning (besides finding suitable Olympic champions)?

Diving as a sport is in a comatose situation, almost obliterated by the removal of diving boards and the new generation of pools that are too shallow for any board.

But apart from the Olympic standard, what about the general grassroots sports opportunities?
There is now a diktat to make new swimming pools all of 25m length and a maximum of 2m deep, economic and advisable for neighbourhood pools but surely inadequate for what we ‘d call borough flagship pools, those facilities that should be the intermediate level between the neighbourhood facility and the Olympic standard. Longer pools with deeper end to allow some diving, just like Ladywell Pool.
There used to be a network of them and like Ladywell pool they are being replaced with lower specification pools.
The new generation of pools is killing sports like diving and with them much of the fun that surrounds aquatic sports with repercussions on the level of participation across the board.

It may be worth challenging Labour with this.

I’m really pleased with what the net is doing to this, in the past few days there has been a degree of scrutiny from bloggers that has become a natural public consultation, information are available, explained and broken down into easy to digest chunks and a well informed consensus is arising.
So pushing for a change earlier rather than later is well worth the effort and at this stage a public debating it before national politicians put their hats into it makes it more likely to be a healthier bottom up change rather than a top down and this may mean that when it changes it does so in a better way then it would if it was left to quangos and organized consultations.

On the other subject the Jolly Farmer is at its best now, and this without mentioning the guest ale… Doom.

From your other post, good to see the Jolly Farmers is back on song as well!

the issue for me is what would have been the cost to keep it in working order if instead of closing it when the Ladywell Gymnastic Club relocated they had done some basic maintenance and allocated it to some other suitable tenants. Back then it wasn’t falling down the way it does now and £420k pay for a lot of works.