TWO or three times a week, Martina cycles from her office in central Oxford to swim 20 lengths of a competition level pool and gets back to her desk within the hour, writes Jon Roycroft, director of sport at Oxford University.

John, who is retired and lives in Iffley Fields, arrives like clockwork at midday for his daily swim.

They are among the 200 community members of Oxford University’s eight-lane 25-metre Rosenblatt Swimming Pool, on Iffley Road.

As director of sport for the university, my conversations with people across Oxford often turn to sports facilities. Some are aware that our sports centre at Iffley Road is open to the community but worry it might feel unwelcoming or ‘too academic’.

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Others assume the university sports facilities are just for students.

I have noticed this in the discussions on the future of the Temple Cowley pool, which has on occasion been described as ‘the only pool in East Oxford’.

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People are surprised when I tell them that, not only is the university’s pool open to the community, but in fact almost half its members are not Oxford students.

It is open for adult-only lane swimming between 6am and 9pm on weekdays, 7am and 5pm on Saturdays and 8.30am and 5pm on Sundays, closing only from 9am to noon on weekdays so local state schools can use the pool for free.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise because there is a long history of community involvement in sport at Oxford. When Sir Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile on the track at Iffley Road 60 years ago, he was no longer at the university but was running against Oxford students.

Most of the 4,000-strong crowd who saw the famous run were from the community.

And yes, our records show the attendance was 4,000, even if the number of people who claim to have been there is a lot higher!

It’s not just the pool. The fitness gym at Iffley Road has 200 community members, including drivers for a local minicab company who pop in to lift weights between shifts.

Runners from the Headington Roadrunners club use the Roger Bannister running track for sprint sessions every week, local football and hockey teams use the water-based hockey pitch, and there are lots of community members of our squash and tennis courts.

The future of community use of our sports facilities is exciting.

We have planning permission to develop the sports centre at Iffley Road to expand our services and accommodate even more users from the community.

We will enlarge the gym, which visitors to our centre know is much-needed, because you often see people stretching, skipping and lifting medicine balls in the corridors.

We will increase the size of the sports hall and build a room dedicated to our popular circuits classes, which are open to all. These changes should begin to take shape in the next 18 months.

I want to encourage Oxford Mail readers to contact us to arrange a free trial swim or take advantage of our current promotional offer – a community swim membership for only £20 a month until the end of March, to give you time to fight off the effects of Christmas.

Give it a try – you’ll find a pool that is professionally run by enthusiastic and friendly staff.

There will not be a gown in sight.

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