Year 4,5,6 left on the bus at 8:30, we were all very excited. Our first stop was the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS]. The tour guide who was a hockey player took us to the swimming pool. The swimming pool was pretty cool. There were underwater cameras, underwater mirrors to help the athletes see their stroke form, and so the athletes could practise diving in and tumble turns, plus the swimmers who did synchronised swimming. The pool is heated the same temperature as the air so the athletes body temperature is the temperature when they get out of the pool. The pool also has aquarium windows so the coaches can look at the athletes while they are swimming. One of the athletes Petria Thomas swam in the AIS pool for 15 years. Over that time she swam the length of the globe [40 thousand kms].

The next part of the tour was the gym. AIS has a gym that is huge. It has every sort of equipment you could imagine such as leg presses, climbing ropes, bikes, weights and many more.

The record on the leg press at the AIS is 720 kg, that is the weight of a cow and the athlete who has this record had to have two other athletes sit on the weight section of the machine as it wouldn't take anymore metal weights.

Another piece of equipment are the ropes, these are climbing ropes where an athlete has to climb from the floor to the roof. The record is held by a 12 year old girl. Her time was 10 seconds.

We saw two olympic athletes, Georgia Godwin who is ranked number one in Australia for gymnastics but sadly she couldn't make it to the games because she tore her achilles in three places. A male athlete, Clay Mason Stephens did get to go to the games as a reserve. Clay has a condition where he is not able to grow muscle on the right side of his body and he is still able to be an athlete in the olympics.

The last part of our tour took us to the volleyball courts. The men's nets are taller than the woman's nets. Some volleyball players can get their stomach over the net while doing a vertical jump. Volleyball players are tall, about twice the size of Ava.

Our last stop on the tour was sportex the place where you can try out sports like ai skiing ai, skeleton run, climbing, afl kicking, rugby union passing at a target chin up challenge, rowing, basketball. soccer. penalty shoot out against an ai goalie and bike riding.

After the AIS we went to the botanic gardens where we ate lunch and then split into groups and went for a walk to see some plants. Our last stop was Mt Ainslie lookout and we could see the whole of Canberra and that was the end of our excursion.

By Ava Hopkins and Betty Krout
Year 4