ECSC Member History Feature No.6 - June

This month's featured member of ECSC is our former swimmer and perhaps slightly less well known of the Tancock Brothers..... Ryan Tancock! Ryan is the older brother of Olympian and another former ECSC swimmer, Liam Tancock. Ryan is very well known in Exeter and Devon swimming circles as he is still a multi-record holder, both with club and county records. Shows that there was plenty of swimming talent in the Tancock family.

The one thing that Ryan certainly lived for was the thrill of racing. He wasn't quite so thrilled by the training! It was well known by all his fellow swimmers and Head Coach at the time, Jon Randall, that training wasn't really for him, but the social aspect of being with his mates in the pool, poolside at galas and the fun of racing was what he loved.

Ryan says "I always turned up for training as I wanted to be with my mates and didn't want to miss out, so I did train, but didn't train hard, unless it was a race set, then I would have to win!" "According to my coach I was the only swimmer he ever knew who could win races on natural talent alone! If only I trained harder, but that just wasn’t me."

Ryan went on to say about his more famous brother Liam. "To be honest I never classed Liam as a rival because no matter what I would never let him beat me and he never did until the day I stopped swimming." Ryan's main events were 50m, 100m, 200m Butterfly and 50m and 100m Freestyle. Like Liam, he also loved sprint events. Demonstrating how much natural talent Ryan had, he was asked by his coach to do the 50m Breaststroke at the Devon County Champs when he was about 18 years old and Ryan smashed it in 29 seconds, which was the fastest time in the Country at the time! Ryan hated the event though....he just wanted to concentrate on swimming Freestyle and Butterfly.

There is a little bit of an urban legend about a lad from Exeter who once qualified for the Devon County Champs gruelling 1500m Freestyle event by swimming it Butterfly.....that was Ryan! He did it because his mates bet him. Ryan swam the event at the Devon's, doing Butterfly and beat the majority of the other swimmers, swimming it in under 20 minutes - pretty impressive!

Ryan did swim for GB in the Three Nations event when he was about 18 years old, but then didn't continue with his swimming. Ryan and his family are obviously very proud of what Liam has gone on to achieve in swimming and Ryan still follows the fortunes of the club where he has so many fond memories.