What about locally based swimmers? Are they improving? We have Olympic swimming facility now, what about the quality of coaching? Come next Olympics we cant be dependent on one or two foreign based simmers again. No excuses next Olympics
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As I said awhile ago..Only IMO, Yuh can't build a big fancy school and that will make people smarter,or a big fancy church and it will make people holy. that being said, Swimming is a whole different animal in sport, prerequisites are like other sports - dedication, hard work, talent - but additional criteria are faith and a lot of time management and life sacrifices.
Unfortunately as TT has a very small pool of competitive swimmers, the top talented athletes need higher competition and strong environments to develop, which means at some point they will have to immerse themselves in a foreign environment, this is where they will make or break, as the demands on the individual are very high, and expensive. We can get around some of the finances with a scholarship, yet to maintain this, the academics has to be strong. For swimmers, during their prime years, it's Pool-Class-Pool-homework-sleep(at present -24hrs/dy, 6-7 dys a week).
Thus a Olympic training facilty will not develop our top swimmers for the higher levels of the sport, as much as it may increase the pool of young swimmers and participants through proper marketing and drawing power of hosting higher level meets and attracting foreign clubs/events to utilize the facility. The benefits of this facility as per Olympic glory may not be apparent in our lifetime, but to the population, with proper administration/management and greater public awareness, may (or may not) have an immediate impact on the sport and maybe even the society. Our main sports are cricket and football, and track, as kids we can get glory in the school yard, in the lane, small goal, lamp-post to lamp-post, windball...but to swim competively, one has to travel to the very few pools in the country.
On the other hand, my surburbian town has 28 public pools in the area, 2 National ranked clubs with Olympic sized pools since 50years with thousands membership, all striving for the same Olympic dream, our 36 Carifta representatives strive for. In that 50 years with thousands registered, every year, our club claim 19 Olympians - some of the claims are from when the ppl pass through the club as kids - of that 19 maybe 1 or 2 attained a final, and 1 made a Olympic Bronze.
Conclusion, the more ppl we can get swimming, the better our charges will be, the better our successes, the more we can get into Intl meets, and the more successes we will have nationally. The glory is in those little successes and the mental aspect associated and not necessarily in the weight of Gold. Again, it's just my opinion, since now, I just start seeing what involved in this sport, hardest thing I ever involved in, proud of my kids for sticking with it. I don't think I could have.
add: dammit, paragraphs
, ok, I tried to fix dat
