About our featured swimmer, Olympic Gold Medallist Bill Kirby:

In late 2002, Paul was approached by Sydney Olympic Gold Medallist, Bill Kirby, to assist him with his new swim school as one of his club coaches:

"Paul's coaching techniques, philosophies and apparent knowledge seemed outstanding. His video analysis on deck alone was remarkable. I have seen and witnessed many of the world's best coaches; there is no doubt that Paul will become one of them. His rapport with clients and children is only one thing that set him apart." Bill Kirby.

Bill Kirby was a member of the Australian men's 4 x 200 freestyle relay team which claimed gold in a World Record time (7:07.05) at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. That team comprised the legendary quartet of Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Michael Klim and Kirby himself. This team claimed three successive World Records for the relay event.

• Photo above: Bill with Gold Medal
• Photo left: the dream team, Bill is second from right.

Bill also claimed an individual silver medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in the 200m butterfly event. He began his swimming career in the surf near his home in Perth. Currently Kirby is ranked as the 5th fastest Australian all time for the 200m freestyle ( 1:48.05 ) and fifth fastest in the 200m butterfly ( 1:57.71 ).

Photo right: Bill launching into the 200 freestyle with Thorpe looking on.

Click here to find out more about Bill's illustrious swimming career, following his retirement in 2001 at the age of 26.

Photos by Sport the Library/Jeff Crow

Paul and Bill became close friends during the time in which Paul worked for the Kirby Swim School. Given Bill's level of achievement in the swimming world, he makes for the ideal swimmer to feature in a DVD demonstrating how to improve your freestyle. Bill gave some insightful input into the content of the DVD and we are extremely proud to feature him in the video for your viewing pleasure.

Whilst Bill performs approximately 80% of the drill demonstrations in the first Swim Smooth DVD, including a great 5 minute uninterupted segment of video from various angles above and below the water's surface, we felt it important to 'balance' Bill's supreme level of efficiency with various other clips of ordinary everyday age-group swimmers and triathletes swimming with less efficient swim strokes. This contrast of technique and ability has been shown to dramatically improve your understanding of skill aquisition (i.e. freestyle technique), and is commonly known as "positive - negative - positive cognitive reconditioning" or Behaviorism in the sports science world. So not only will you be swimming more efficiently, you’ll also be learning more efficiently too!