Olympic Pools

The Olympic Games became the high point of international competitive swimming and set the standard for swimming facilities. Swimming events at the 1896 Olympics were held in the open sea and those of the 1912 in an enclosure in Stockholm harbour, but standards of Olympic swimming facilities continued to rise. By the 1930s, an Olympic-size pool was the sort of facility where elite swimmers wanted to compete and train.

In the Depression-era public works programs, NSW government engineers often tried to convince coastal councils to construct Olympic-size ocean baths, rather than more modest and less expensive ocean pools. Port Kembla's 1937 Olympic Baths was a magnificent saltwater pool built on a hill overlooking the ocean beach.

The television coverage and tremendous publicity around the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the achievements of Australia's swimmers, combined with a buoyant post-war economy, led to the construction of Olympic pools throughout Australia. Even school competitions focused on standardised Olympic distances. Pools of non-standard distances afflicted with waves were seen as far from ideal training grounds for serious competition.

Fifty metre Olympic-size ocean baths include the pools at The Entrance, Towradgi, Bulli and Shellharbour's Bev Whitfield pool. The Merewether Ocean Baths are larger than Olympic size.

Compared to the glory of the Olympic pools, the older non-Olympic baths were suddenly reduced to the status of mere wading pools, just something for the kids or the oldies, a place to splash, float, learn to swim and then move on to proper competition pools. Those older non-Olympic rock baths still appealed to swimming clubs and surf clubs long associated with a particular ocean rock baths. Winter swimming clubs helped bring competition back to many 'less than Olympic-size' ocean baths.

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