New facility set to take swimming to the next level

A 50-metre pool with dive tank and dive platform is under construction at the National Sports Centre.

Currently Bermuda has three 25-metre pools.

The new swimming facility was projected to take 18 months to complete with it expected to be ready during the summer of 2012.

Ben Smith, national swim coach and aquatics manager for the Bermuda Amateur Swimming Association said the facility will help take the organization to the next level.

“It will give us the ability to increase the base of the programme because, at present, we can’t really grow.

“With the clubs that we have, we’re already at capacity, so in order to make the programme better we need to be able to have more pool time. Each club needs more time to train more often.”

He said besides helping the clubs, it will also give the public greater access to swimming facilities.

He said having a “learn to swim” programme would provide benefits.

“Our current pools are booked up when the public would like to get in. That access to the programme would be the next step, which would allow us to attract more swimmers.”

Mr. Smith said another added function of the new facility would be to allow for different aquatic sports to be offered like water polo, diving and synchronized swimming.

“The hard part is, because we’ve never had access to that, is that we don’t even know what the demand for those sports are going to be.

“When we go to the Carifta Games, synchronized swimming and water polo are parts of that competition, which we’ve never been able to send representation to because we just don’t have access to the training facility.”

Bermuda’s only had one diver over the past 50 years, and that was Katura Perinchief Horton, who represented the island at the Olympics.

“She reached quite a high level of diving, but she had to work around the fact that Bermuda doesn’t have the facilities; she had to spend most of her time doing training overseas.

“It shows that if we had the access, we can develop the talent to reach that level.

“In the past we have had a water polo programme, but that was working around the facility, and doesn’t really allow them to do a proper water polo programme.”

Mr. Smith said that as a team sport, water polo attracts a different kind of athlete than does swimming.

He added the 50-metre pool would allow local swimmers to train at a distance they will see at international competitions. Right now, if they want to get that type of competition in, the swimmers have to go overseas.

Mr. Smith said: “By having a 50-metre pool locally, hopefully, we’ll be able to have better training for our athletes for long course meets, but hopefully we’ll be able to attract people from overseas to come in and train so we can have better competition at practice.”

He said having the national aquatics centre would “not necessarily mean” that all swim competitions will be held there.

“The BASA Pool at Saltus is the legal length pool for 25 metre races and we’ve been using it all this time and we could still do that.” He said finally seeing construction on the aquatics centre has created some buzz in the swimming community.

“This has been a long time coming. People have been trying to get this project to happen for a really long time so everyone is quietly optimistic.”