Diving Australia has today announced that it has appointed Andy Banks to the position of National Coach Melbourne.

Andy has been involved in diving coaching for over 30 years, having started in Bradford UK, prior to moving to Plymouth, UK, where he has been the lead coach for over 20 years. Andy has been an integral part of Team GB as an Olympic coach for the last 3 Olympic Games.

Whilst Andy is perhaps most well known as the first coach of diving superstar Tom Daley, taking him from a beginner all the way to Olympic and World Championships medals, Andy has a much broader coaching resume. In fact, not only coaching, but program management and development have also played a large part in Andy’s diving career.

Andy has formal qualifications in human movement studies, with a focus on biomechanics, psychology and gymnastics. All integral parts of being a diving coach. Andy is a Visiting Fellow at the University of St Mark and John lecturing on topics related to his passion of long term athlete development and program planning.

In addition to his success with Tom Daley, Andy has coached athletes of the calibre of Tonia Couch and Sarah Barrow as well as younger stars such as Robyn Birch, Victoria Vincent and Matthew Dixon.

Andy is excited about the new challenges offered up by the new National Coach Melbourne role: “I am so grateful to the City of Plymouth and other partners in the City who have supported me for the last 25 years, but all good things come to an end and I am so excited to get down under and sink my teeth into all things Melbourne and Australia. Obviously I know and love working with Ady who is now an Australian National Coach in Brisbane, but I am also so excited to be working with Chava Sobrino and Michel Larouche and the other Australian coaches – particularly Gong Ming and all the other Melbourne based coaches. Diving Australia has a great vision and are continuing to assemble a team of people within their national program which I believe will set the global benchmark – when I was invited to join that team, the answer had to be YES!”

As a mark of the respect Andy has for his athletes and coaching colleagues, they were the first group Andy advised.

Diving Australia CEO David Bell paid tribute to the parties that enabled this new role to be created: “Diving Australia is indebted to the Victorian Institute of Sport and Diving Victoria for their support in making this a possibility. And, of course, the Australian Institute of Sport, our major funding partner who are great supporters of ours. Andy is one of the world’s best coaches and to add him to our Melbourne Program, in a newly created National Coach role will give us a huge boost nationally. We know he will be a fantastic asset and we couldn’t be happier!”.

Andy will formally commence with Diving Australia in the next few months, following visa arrangements and will be making a short visit to Australia to take in the Australian Open Championships in late May.