Dundee’s new Olympia leisure centre finally opened to the public on Thursday.
More than six months behind schedule but within its £31.5million budget, the centre opened its training pool at 6am and the leisure pool, with its flumes, wave pool and diving boards, opened four hours later at 10am.
The all-bells-and-whistles centre has a 50 metre pool, wave pool, rapid river, four flumes, dive pool, activity pool and caf.
The flumes are all entered from the top of a single 11.6 metre high tower. The blue, green and red flumes drop into their own splash channels, while the yellow “cannonball” flume only for the daring has a 3.8 metre drop into the dive pool.
By lunchtime , the leisurecentre was buzzing with a mix of parents and children, teenagers and older people doing lengths in the training pool, which has lifts installed for disabled swimmers.
A group of youths were performing back flips off the 1m springboard into the splash pool, but none went to 5m.
A total of 279 seats overlook the pool. These are only likely to be filled when the centre hosts competitions: yesterday only a handful of elderly people occupied them, watching on as children and grandchildren splashed around.
Those who want to enjoy swimming in the Olympic-sized 50m pool need to get in early, however, as the pool is only open at its full length from 6am-8am each day.
After that, pool attendants drag submersible booms across, dividing it into three areas a 25m training pool, a shallow play area for toddlers, and a 4m deep splash pool for the diving boards and cannonball flume.
The 50m pool cannot be used forinternational-standard competitions,however. Although it meets the requisite length, the Olympia has only six lanes and Olympic-standard pools have 10.