UPDATE – FINA Diving World Series has been cancelled. Read the interview below and join us in looking forward to a brilliant Year of Sport next year.

Formerly an Olympic athlete herself, Jane Figueiredo is now Head Diving Coach to some of Britain’s top performing divers and runs her training club from the London Aquatics Centre. With the final stage of the prestigious FINA Diving World Series coming to London in March – a key qualification event for Tokyo 2020 – we spoke to Jane to find out more about her experience training Britain’s best.

What’s it like coaching Olympic athletes?

It’s been brilliant, from having just Tom Daley to seeing how the club has grown it’s quite humbling to see what we’ve created and I now coach five divers, Tom Daley, Matty Lee, Grace Reid, Robyn Birch and Micaela Bouter. 

It’s been a real team effort, including a physio, sports psychiatrist, strength and conditioning coach, the support of British Diving and the support of GLL and LLDC. We couldn’t have created this great team without all of these people.

What’s it like training at the London Aquatics Centre?

The Park creates an atmosphere that you can’t get anywhere else in the world and the London Aquatics Centre itself really is the best of the best. While it was built for the Olympic Games, we’ve been very lucky that the legacy was thought about before it was built and now it’s providing something to the public as well as home to the club where we develop the top divers in the world. 

Do you think the significance of training at the Park that hosted the 2012 Games makes a difference?

This Park is more than just pretty, it makes people feel like when they compete in London, it’s going to be amazing. There’s always so much going on at the other venues around the Park too – I went to the hockey qualifiers in November for example – and when the Park hosts these hugely important events, it makes all the difference for us. 

With Tokyo coming up and the qualifiers underway, has training changed for your divers? What’s a typical day like for them?

It used to be the way that people would train intensely but nowadays the thinking is that a little bit of rest before a big competition brings its own benefits – you have rested athletes, you have clarity. On a typical training day wake up at 6.30am and get themselves ready for a 7.45am start at the London Aquatics Centre. We start off in the dryland gym area for cardio, stretching and somersaults into the pit. Then we head through into the pool itself to practise the dives – hard dives, easy dives, skill work. We’ll do this for about an hour and a half and then it’s back into the dry land area!  It’s a full-on day finishing at about 4.30pm. There’s also a lot of focus on recovery so that means ice baths for the divers!

Are you looking forward to the FINA Diving World Series coming to London next month?

We’re always extremely excited when we have the world series in London – it’s not just because we’re biased, it’s the feedback we get from athletes and coaches who come from all over the world! It also means that the divers’ friends and families can come and support them which isn’t normal, because when you’re traveling to Japan or Korea, most families can't afford to come. It is a lot more nerve-racking for them, but as long as they can overcome that nervousness, they’ll do great. Every time the World Series comes to the London Aquatics Centre, we’ve had the best results. 

This year they’ve changed the format a little bit so we’re hoping that the highlight events will be split across the week and in the evenings too, which will allow more people to come and see them.