Paralympic swimming stars Oliver Hynd and Charlotte Henshaw took the plunge into the pool to mark the opening of a new £40 million sports facility.
The David Ross Sports Village at the University of Nottingham opened the doors to its new 12m climbing wall and table tennis hall for the first time to the public.
The facility also includes 20 badminton courts, an all-glass squash court – one of only four in the country – and a Dojo martial arts training centre.
The sports village will host National Badminton league matches, BUCS National Table Tennis and Squash Championships.
Mansfield’s double-gold medallist Oliver Hynd, 21, spent his time touring the facilities and swimming in the pool with fellow Paralympian medallist Charlotte Henshaw.
He set a world-record winning the 400m freestyle and accomplished the same feat by finishing first in the 200m individual medley at the 2016 Rio Paralympics; he also won silver in the 100m backstroke.
Hynd said: “It’s [the sports village] incredible; when I was driving here I didn’t recognise it – I got lost, I didn’t know where I was!
“It’s fantastic to have this kind of facility in Nottingham.
“Obviously we’ve got a great history of sport in Nottingham, so to have every facility you can possibly think of here at the university is great.”
Henshaw, who won bronze in the 100m breaststroke in Rio this summer, said that although she has trained in the university’s pool for a number of years, it’s important that the world-class sports village offers more sporting facilities.
She said: “It’s brilliant and I think it’s time we had a facility like this is Nottinghamshire.
“It was a huge thing for me when trying to find a degree to go to go to a university such as Stirling that had the facilities to allow me to continue to swim.
“Now Nottinghamshire puts itself in that bracket where people consider it as a serious option to continue their sport and do their studies at the same time.”
