Inside Sandwell Aquatics Centre as first users give former Commonwealth Games venue thumbs up

The morning of the first official day of the Sandwell Aquatics Centre in Smethwick opening to the public saw large numbers of people come to access the pool, the fitness suite, the cross-fit area, the women's only gym and the other facilities.

The new facility is being operated by Sandwell Leisure Trust (SLT) and offers the only 10-lane, 50-metre Olympic-sized swimming pool in the West Midlands, along with a 10-metre high dive tower and 25-metre dive pool.

It was the only newly-built venue for the 2022 Commonwealth Games and was built with the ultimate aim of becoming a community centre for people not just in Sandwell, but across the region.

After a grand launch event on Thursday and a series of taster sessions over the weekend to give people an idea of what is on offer at the centre, Monday, July 24 marked the first day of regular use by the public.

So far, more than 40 schools have booked in for school swimming and more than 1,300 people have transferred swimming lessons to the centre, as well as 1,200 members transferring from Langley and Smethwick Leisure Centres and 3,500 new fitness memberships being sold.

Inside the fitness suite, some of those members were getting in their early morning workouts, pumping iron or getting their steps in on the treadmill or doing their morning exercises before work.

Among those working out was 20-year-old Mauro Silva, who said he liked the new centre and was looking forward to training somewhere local to him.

He said: "It's really nice and I think it's good to have such a big centre so local to me as it will make it easy for me to do my workout before I go to work as I live three minute walk away.

"I think it looks great in here as it's all modern and the machines are new and it's a well-stocked gym, plus the centre looks really nice."

There were plenty of weight stations for people to use and benches for people to go through their workouts, including Kingsley Odiase, who was going through his bench presses.

He said: "I think this centre is very good and I like the gym here.

"I do need to travel a little bit to get here from Bearwood, but it's worth it for the amount of equipment I can used to work out with."

Memberships, which include full use of all SLT facilities, including the gym and pools at Sandwell Aquatics Centre, have been priced at £33 per month.

Among those people to have left other gyms to sign up for the Aquatics Centre and the membership scheme was Nelma Capela from Smethwick, with the 21-year-old saying she had loved seeing the new centre.

She said: "I literally loved everything and I feel like it's worth every penny as I was going to Pure Gym and have cancelled my membership to come over here because everything looks so modern.

"I went down to have a look at the pool and it looked great there, plus the gym is well stocked and the treadmills are very modern, so you can watch things like your calorie count.

"I would definitely recommend the place to people as the price for membership is better than other places you get so much for your money."

On the opening day of the centre, staff were dealing with queries, directing people to classes and where to go to change for the pool and dealing with any issues as and when they came up.

Site fitness coordinator Heather Manser said it had been an incredible morning and spoke about how excited everyone from staff to the customers had been to see the centre open.

She said: "We are very fortunate to be part of the founding team here and the buzz is electric, so everyone is really enjoying the experience of being here.

"Being day one, you don't know what is going to happen when you open the doors for the first time, but we know what the locals are like and we've only moved just down the road from our existing site, so we've seen a lot of familiar faces, which has been fantastic.

"We've got some state-of-the-art equipment in here and we are very fortunate to have a specific studio which has been designed for high intensity interval training, as well as our ladies-only facilities and our 50-metre pool and diving board.

"What we hope from the first week is to make sure that the locals coming in are getting the same level of excitement that our staff have had and we want to help people settle in and help them on whatever journey they are going on."

To find out more about the centre and membership, go to slt-leisure.co.uk/launch/