The club has been forced to move to the Stawell Leisure Complex tomorrow for its annual swimming carnival and has had to negotiate months of training indoor due to the unavailability of the Ararat facility.

"The kids aren't quite as confident with dives and tumble turns because they haven't been able to practise them as much, so it has slowed their progression this season," Ararat Swimming Club president, Jacinta Couzens said.

"Their confidence in competing in 50-metre pools is definitely down as well."

The club has been training in the Ararat YMCA's 25-metre indoor pool, and since December members have been competing in swimming carnivals across the Wimmera and around the state.

Ms Couzens said the biggest inconvenience caused by the closure of the outdoor pool was that the swimmers were unable to practise in an environment similar to competition.

"Most of the meets are held in 50-metre outdoor pools, so breathing and body fitness of the kids has had an impact, because it is a huge difference going from training in an indoor pool to competing in an outdoor one," she said.

"It affects the young bodies the most, changing from training to competition, ideally we would like to keep the two as close together as possible."

The Ararat Swimming Club has worked closely with the Wimmera District Swimming Association and Ararat Rural City Council to assist with the transfer of the Ararat swim meet to the Stawell Leisure Complex.

"We've managed to do it okay," Ms Couzens said.

"The Ararat Mayor is opening the swim meet and it is still a big draw card event for swimming in the region. We've got clubs as far as Geelong coming and competing.

"We still have more than 100 entries for the meeting, but numbers are slightly down on previous years."

This year the Ararat Swimming Club has 17 members and six competitive swimmers, and Ms Couzens said despite the drawback of training indoors all had been performing well at the various swimming carnivals.