Best sports holidays with kids: Club La Santa vs Neilson vs Club Med

There was a time when choosing a holiday involved an entirely reasonable set of questions.

• Can I take my bike?
• Is there a decent swimming pool?
• Where can I run?
• And how much training can I squeeze in before someone points out that this is technically meant to be a holiday?

Before children, I went to Club La Santa with my triathlon club. Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about me at the time.

I was properly into it. I went from 20 stone to running marathons and eventually completing Ironman Austria in under 12 hours. I cycled a lot. I ran a lot. I swam a lot. I willingly went on holiday with other people who thought getting up early to exercise three times a day was fun.

I actually wrote about the whole transformation on Yellow Jersey back in 2015 in my original Ironman journey. Reading it again more than a decade later is a slightly uncomfortable reminder of just how seriously I took all this.

Then children happened.

And rather unexpectedly, Club La Santa stayed.

We’ve been back every year since my youngest daughter was two. On one of those early trips she was still potty training. She’s now old enough, fit enough and competitive enough to beat me in the family aquathlon.

There are few more effective ways of confronting your own mortality than being overtaken by someone whose nappies you can distinctly remember changing.

These days my daughters play competitive football, I run, play padel and still occasionally get on a bike. I’ve even tried HYROX.

I now describe myself as a semi-retired triathlete. Like an ageing rock star, I’ve never officially announced my retirement because I want to preserve the possibility of an ill-advised comeback.

So I’ve experienced sports holidays from both sides: as the obsessive amateur athlete choosing a holiday around his own training, and as a dad trying to find somewhere that works for the whole family.

Along the way we’ve done Club La Santa, Neilson and Club Med.

All three are good. But they’re good in quite different ways.

And if you’re trying to work out which is the best sports holiday for your family, I’ve found that the age of your children matters almost as much as the sports you want to do.

Club La Santa vs Neilson vs Club Med: the ridiculously quick comparison

Club La Santa with kids: from family races to getting beaten by your children

This is probably where I should declare my bias.

I love Club La Santa.

I’ve been going there since before I had children.

My first experience was with my triathlon club, when Club La Santa was essentially paradise: somewhere you could swim, bike and run all day surrounded by other people who considered that a perfectly sensible way to spend annual leave.

Then we had children.

We kept going.

We’ve been back every year since my youngest was two.

And, because this is Club La Santa, it wasn’t long before we discovered the family races.

I’m slightly ashamed to admit to one of my less distinguished moments as a father.

I won.

Not the Olympics. Not an Ironman. A family race on holiday against my children.

And I made her cry.

There are times as a parent when you have to teach your children that winning isn’t everything.

Apparently I decided this lesson was best delivered by beating them.

Fortunately, children grow.

And this is the thing I’ve come to love most about Club La Santa.

It has grown with them.

Every year there’s been something else they can do. Something they’ve become old enough to try. Something they can do more independently. Eventually you stop fitting your sport around the children and start doing sport with them.

Until, inevitably, the balance of power shifts.

My youngest now beats me in the family aquathlon.

And no, I didn’t let her win.

She beat me.

I suppose I should be proud.

I am proud.

I’d just prefer her to be slightly slower.

Why Club La Santa gets better as the kids get older

That’s what makes Club La Santa different for me.

When the girls were tiny, they came along because it was somewhere my wife and I wanted to go. Now they genuinely get as much out of it as we do.

What makes it work is the sheer breadth of sport available.

On the same holiday we can swim in a proper pool, open-water swim, run, cycle, play tennis, play padel, use the gym, do fitness or CrossFit-style sessions and then try something none of us had planned to do.

And we’re not necessarily doing it together.

That’s important.

A good family sports holiday doesn’t mean spending seven days marching around as a four-person unit.

As children get older, it’s almost the opposite.

Everyone can find their thing.

Then you reconvene later, compare what you’ve done and eat an unreasonable amount of food.

And that’s probably the best endorsement I can give Club La Santa.

I’ve changed enormously. It still works.

Club Med with kids: when childcare is an Olympic sport

Club Med was brilliant for us for a different reason.

When the children were very young, the kids’ club was exceptional.

At that stage of parenting you don’t necessarily need another threshold session.

You need someone trustworthy to take your children away for a few hours.

Suddenly you can play tennis. Go cycling. Try some yoga. Go sailing. Or perform the most decadent activity available to parents of small children:

Sit down.

The exact sports vary between Club Med resorts, but for us the formula worked brilliantly when the girls were small.

It felt like a family holiday where the adults could still actually have a holiday.

That’s why I wouldn’t simply declare Club La Santa the answer for every family.

Different stages of family life need different things.

Club Med absolutely nailed one of ours.

Neilson with kids: the brilliant middle ground

Neilson is different again.

For us, its strengths are sailing, watersports, tennis, cycling, fitness and yoga. It’s properly active without sport completely dominating the holiday.

And that’s ideal for lots of families.

One person can sail. Someone else can play tennis. Another can cycle. Someone can do yoga.

That’s increasingly what family sport looks like for us.

When I was doing Ironman, my idea of an active holiday was basically:

Swim. Bike. Run. Eat. Repeat.

Now four members of the same family can have four completely different sporting obsessions.

Neilson handles that particularly well.

Nobody has to explain why Dad has disappeared for a four-hour bike ride.

Well, perhaps Dad still has to explain that.

Which sports holiday is best for kids of different ages?

Every family and every child is different, but based purely on our own experience, this is how I’d think about the three:

From Ironman and cycling to football, padel and HYROX

The funny thing is that my own sporting life has changed almost as much as our holidays.

I used to define myself largely through triathlon and cycling.

Now I play padel. I run. I’ve tried HYROX. I still cycle. And my daughters’ competitive football occupies an enormous part of our family life.

I’m still a cyclist.

I’m just lots of other things as well.

And I don’t think I’m particularly unusual.

Cyclists run. Runners discover HYROX. Middle-aged men discover padel and immediately behave as though they’re one wildcard away from the professional tour.

Your children’s sports become part of your sporting life too.

Sport doesn’t stay neatly in one box.

That’s also part of the reason Yellow Jersey has changed.

We started in cycling and triathlon because that’s the world we came from and understood.

And it’s still a world we know extremely well.

But increasingly our customers look rather like me. They cycle and run. They swim. They ski. They play golf. They enter HYROX. They paddle. They sail. They play racket sports. Their children travel for football, rugby, cricket or hockey.

That’s a big part of why Yellow Jersey has expanded from its cycling roots into Sports Travel Insurance covering hundreds of sports.

One boring-but-important thing I’ve learned about sports holidays

I’m afraid this is the point where the insurance person emerges.

Sorry.

One thing holidays like these have taught me is just how many different activities a family can do in a week.

You might cycle on Monday, open-water swim on Tuesday, sail on Wednesday, play tennis on Thursday and do something on Friday that you hadn’t even heard of when you arrived.

So don’t simply assume that having travel insurance means every sport you’re planning to do is covered.

Check.

That’s one of the reasons we created Yellow Jersey Sports Travel Insurance — for people whose holidays tend to involve rather more activity than lying beside the pool.

So which sports holiday would I choose now?

For our family today, Club La Santa.

Not because Club Med or Neilson aren’t excellent. We’ve had great holidays with both.

It’s because Club La Santa has somehow followed us through every stage.

I went there as an Ironman-obsessed triathlete before children.

I went there with a two-year-old who was potty training.

And I now go there with daughters who are increasingly capable of beating me.

That’s quite a journey.

The slightly alarming thought is what happens next.

At this rate, in another few years they’ll be disappearing off to train while I sit by the pool complaining about my knees.

Which, actually, doesn’t sound too bad.

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About the author

Ryan Georgiades is Managing Director of Yellow Jersey. An Ironman triathlete (a while ago) and long-time cyclist, these days his sporting life also involves running, padel, occasional HYROX-related bad decisions and spending an extraordinary amount of time around children’s football pitches.

He has visited Club La Santa since before having children and has returned with his family every year since his youngest daughter was two.