PARALYMPIC coach Dave Evitts is confident the swim squad will continue where Team GB’s Olympians left off.

The lead coach at Horwich Leisure Centre Amateur Swimming Club and founder of the Bolton Metro Swim Squad is one of a six-strong team charged with helping our Paralympians enjoy a golden Games.

He was picked to join the squad going to Brazil earlier this year, following on from his work as a development coach for Team GB on the Paralympic podium potential programme.

The 55-year-old has seen first-hand the form our Paralympic swimmers have shown in the training pool and is excited by their medal prospects.

“We have been running a series of time trials over the last few weeks, helping to give the athletes a clear idea of where they are at, and I think it’s fair to say there is plenty to be excited about,” said Evitts, before flying out to Rio last Thursday.

“So we are all looking forward to it.

“We have a great blend in the team.

“We have got some very good swimmers in there, from established stars like James Crisp and Sascha Kindred, who has been to five Paralympic Games, to Ellie Simmonds, undoubtedly one of faces of the London Games, as well as some youngsters who maybe won’t peak until Tokyo.

“So it is a strong squad and I can comfortably say they will all do a great job.”

Evitts, of Markland Hill, is no stranger to big international tournaments after going to the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

He travelled Down Under as personal coach to Preston swimmer Rob Greenwood, who honed his talents under Evitts at BMSS.

Greenwood has since followed him into coaching, heading up the Paralympic swimming programme, and will join Evitts out in Rio as overall head of the Paralympic swim team.

The pair were reunited at the squad’s base at Manchester Aquatics Centre, where they work hand in hand, Greenwood overseeing the elite stars’ coaching and Evitts helping to spot and develop the younger talent coming through.

“I am absolutely delighted to be given this opportunity, and it is great that I will be working with Rob out there,” he said.

“When we went out to Australia together for the Olympics I was kind of on the outside looking in.

“I wasn’t based in the village, with the athletes. All the swimmers’ personal coaches were put up elsewhere and we just basically met up with them at the pool to watch them swim.

“This is completely different.

“We fly out a week before the start of competition and will be out there right through to September 20.

“The coaches are based in the village, and we will be working in pairs, managing about 10 swimmers between each pair.

“We will be looking after all their needs, to make sure they have the best possible experience, and I can’t wait.

“I am nearly 56, and never expected to get another opportunity to go to a big international event like this.”

Evitts, who has two children – Anthony, aged 20, and Georgia, 18 – with wife Tara, started as a swimming teacher at Horwich Leisure Centre before taking up a role as aquatic sports development manager for Bolton Council, who he worked for for 27 years.

During that time he set up BMSS in 1990 as a bid to stop the town’s best swimming talent from leaving the area to progress their careers.

It proved a huge success, with Evitts taking both Greenwood and Egerton’s Anthony Howard to the Commonwealth Games, with Howard winning a bronze in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

He left Bolton Council in 2004 to take up a similar role with Lancashire County Council before being headhunted to join British Swimming’s talent team.

Between 2006 and 2012 stars like Rebecca Adlington, Adam Peaty, James Guy, Siobhan Marie O’Connor, Fran Halsall and Steven Parry graduated up through his programme and into the British squad.

But immediately after the London Games, Evitts was tempted to take up a role with the Paralympic team and he has never looked back.

“It is such a rewarding job,” he said.

“There are two development coaches on the podium potential programme, I look after everyone north of the Midlands.

“It is a huge responsibility, to help target those young swimmers capable of making the Paralympic squad and help them reach their potential.

“I work with club coaches to make sure their swimmers have everything they need, and we arrange maybe five or six coaching sessions in Manchester a year.

“The standard is also not what you might think.

“The majority of our Paralympians train alongside the rest of the top swimmers in their clubs. We have one young lad, Lewis White, who trains alongside (Olympic gold medallist) Adam Peaty with his coach, Mel Marshall.

“The real difference is the complexity of it. At any Games you don’t just have male and female swimmers taking part in each stroke and each distance, you have 14 different categories of disability for each event as well.

“So it is very involved, but I absolutely love the job.”