Meet our staff

With more than 15 years of experience in the swimming world Beyond Swimming’s mission is to guide swimmers of all age groups to develop their skills and confidence in the water.
Mariona, the founder of Beyond Swimming has implemented the philosophy of her professional swimming career into a personalized program that blends structure with lots of fun.
She is a former Spanish champion who traveled across the world representing the Spanish swimming team in many international swimming championships.
She’s also a former student-athlete from Wingate University DVII, North Carolina.
At Beyond Swimming we understand the importance of enjoying the process of learning, we want to pass on everything that we’ve learned and practiced for so many years in a very fun and interactive program.
To us the most important aspect is to see our swimmers explore the water with a smile on their face.

Katya was born and raised in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is the oldest of 5 kids in the Gakhokidze family. Katya started swimming at age of 4. In her swimming career, Katya was a former member of the Kazakh National Swimming Team. Katya became an international-level athlete with multiple honors and achievements. She brought to her team a dozen medals from Asian Swimming Championships, Indoor Asian Games, and European Grand Prix. Katya is a sprinter. Her best events were 50/ 100 Freestyle, 50/100 Backstroke, and 50/100 Butterfly. In the off-season, Katya was doing Open Water swimming. In May 2014 Katya graduated with a Sports Physiology/Coach bachelor's degree at Kazakh National University named after Al-Farabi.

Valentina a 4-times European Champion on 50 and 100 breastroke (twice in Rijeka, Croatia, 2008 and twice in Szczecin, Poland, 2011). As a member of the Russian National Swimming Team, at the FINA World Cup, She has won numerous medals and was crowned the FINA World Cup Swimmer of the Meet (2008). Valentina has also set the European Record on six separate occasions in the Women’s 50-meter and 100-meter Breaststroke. Won two bronze medals on 50 breaststroke at World Universiade (Shenzhen, China, 2011 and Kazan, Russia, 2013).
Since 2002 to 2007 Valentina was a member of the Russian National Finswimming Team.

Eleonora is a highly accomplished swimmer with over 10 years of experience in the sport. She has been a multiple prize winner at the Ukrainian Championships, including being named the Ukrainian National Champion in the 100 and 200 backstroke events.