Santiago Veiga

Santiago Veiga was born in Lugo (Spain) in 1982 and is presently living in Madrid (Spain). Having been a competitive swimmer at the national level until 2002, he was the head coach of Youth Spanish Swimming Team (2017-2021) and coach of the Olympic Semifinalist (2016) and World Junior Champion (2015 and 2017) Hugo González de Oliveira, besides other international medalists. In 2015, he was awarded the 2015 Best Swimming Coach by the Spanish National Swimming Coaches Association.

Academic training

His academic background includes a degree in Sport Sciences (2005) from the University La
Coruña (Spain) (where he was awarded for the Outstanding Graduate of the Year 2005) and a PhD (Hons.) on Sports Performance (2010) for the University Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), besides the level 3 certified Swimming Coach for the Spanish Swimming Federation (from 2005). During the undergraduate studies, he enjoyed three 9-month scholarships in national and international universities (Chieti (Italy) in 2003, Barcelona in 2004 and Madrid in 2005) as well as a 3-month period working as swimming teacher in USA (summer 2005).

Professional background

During his technical leading task at the Royal Spanish Swimming Federation, Madrid Swimming Federation (from 2007-2008 to 2017) and also directly coaching the top group (youth to senior) at the Madrid Training Centre (2011-2012 to 2017), he was part of the Spanish coaching staff in more than 50 training camps and in the last 9 European Junior Championships, the 2015 European Short Course Championships (Netanya), the 2015-2017-2019 World Junior Championships (Singapur), the 2015 Baku European Games and the 2014 Youth Olympic Games (Nanging) among several other open international competitions.

Sport Scientist background

At the same time of his professional background on the swimming coaching, he
developed an academic career as a part-time Associate Professor at the Technical University of Madrid from 2011 to present, in the areas of sports biomechanics and skill acquisition. This allowed him to participate in different research projects like the official competition analysis of the 2012 London Paralympic Games and the 2013 Barcelona World Swimming Championships and also to commence a new research line, with several international publications both on scientific journals (see the list below) and informative publications (see the following links):

http://www.swimmingscience.net/2016/04/dolphin-kicks-elite-swimmers.html
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/michael-phelps-gold-medal-dolphin-kick-turn
http://www.swimmingscience.net/2014/01/friday-interview-dr-santi-veiga.html)