January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Will the new $20m pool sink or swim?
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7: Government has spent $20 million on the new National Aquatics Centre, but some in the swim community say it is trying to be all things to all people and that it will end up pleasing none of the groups that will use it.
Co-head national swim Ben Smith called it “an okay facility” while Bermuda Female Athlete of the Year Lisa Blackburn said it was “nice-looking” but there were areas that “needed attention”.
Former Olympic swimmer Mike Cash added the pool isn’t designed for community use and it fails in that regard. Bernie Asbell, interim CEO of the National Sports Centre, took all their questions in stride. The Bermuda Sun gauged their views and examined some of the key issue surrounding the new 50m pool.
Will Centre mould a champion?
Lisa Blackburn said by trying to facilitate so many users it makes it difficult to know when people can use the pool — making it hard for serious swimmers to get the required pool time.
She said: “For swimmers, it’s important to swim 50m and train 50m on a regular basis. In order to swim 50m the divers will be sacrificed because they need to use the same water.
“There are four swim clubs on the island and we’re all going to want to use the pool at the same time which is between six and eight o’clock in the morning and from four to seven o’clock at night.
“How do you accommodate that many people in eight lanes?
“Having said that, we’re not going to be the only groups that are going to want to use the pool between these times — there will be the divers, there will be swim lessons, there will be the aquafit, there will be public swims — there will be a lot of things going on.”
Asbell said he doesn’t feel the pool is trying to be too many things to too many groups.
“I’m an operator and they’re competitive swimmers. Ben trains competitive swimmers and Lisa is one. A competitive swimmer would ideally like a uniform depth pool and nobody else in the water.
“The idea of a really good facility is you want multiple users; you want to be able to get youngsters into the pool; and you want to be able to accommodate water polo, competitive swimming and people who just want to play in the water.
“That’s always better with multiple depths of pool.
“This is going to be an outstanding competitive swim pool.”
Smith, though, said the pool is not a fast pool.
“If you were building a pool that was meant for competitive swimming
and developing competitive swimming then you also didn’t build the right pool.
“At this point, that’s the pool that we have, there’s no sense in crying over spilt milk.
“But considering we had one opportunity to build
a world class facility to make that many mistakes is kind of a tragedy for the island.”
Smith said the deep end of the pool where the diving area is, is too deep for a fast pool. “The pools you’ll see at the world championships, Olympics — anybody building a pool for fast competitions, it has to have a uniform depth.”
Will it hold international meets?
Ben Smith believes there is a misconception being put out by the National Sports Centre that Bermuda can host Carifta and other big meets.
“We can’t,” he said. “I’ve had it verified from the committee at Carifta. They know what pool we’ve built and at present we cannot host that event.
“Our region is disappointed because they were hoping we would have another pool that could host the event.”
He said most people would have built a 10-lane pool, but since we didn’t, we needed to build a warm-up pool. There is no place to warm up or cool down.”
Smith said while it is FINA certified, it could not host a 50m meet, adding there is no money to build the planned warm-up pool.
Asbell said the bulkhead on the pool could be moved to 25 metres, thus creating a warm up and warm down area for the swimmers.
“I have hosted PANPAX, which is a very senior set of games, which is sort of the equivalent of Carifta, which is for the countries on the Pacific rim — Canada, the US, Australia — these are some big swimming powers. I hosted a meet of that calibre in Calgary in a 50m pool, but it’s management of water. “We moved the bulkhead around so it’s a 25m swim and a 25m warm-up pool.
He added: “That’s how it’s done. That’s the difference between a coach, a swimmer and an operator. I know how to deal with the management of the water source — that’s my job. We can host world class competition in this pool that will be the envy of many.”
Ben Smith said this is being put out as a community pool.
“The problem is it’s a diving pool. The pool is very deep for a community pool. It isn’t set up properly for people who are not strong swimmers. The shallow end is deep and the deep end is really deep. For any person who is not a confident swimmer it’s going to be a daunting pool to swim in.”
He said with an electricity bill of 100k a month, the “way you generate money is you have to have a lot of learn to swim, but they didn’t build a pool in which they could do a lot of learn to swim in because it’s too deep.”
Cash said “Steve Castree’s observation at the meeting is the shallow end isn’t shallow enough for that. Yes, you can throw in tables, but then you always have to be paying attention to younger kids stepping off the end of that and into water they can’t stand in.”
Cash said that as a taxpayer the Aquatics Centre is being described as something that is going to service the needs of a wide range of groups.
“That has not been built so far and given the financial position the island is in, I would be stunned if anyone can afford to pay for anything more than what’s been already been spent.
“So what we have is a 50m pool without a warm up or warm down facility so that’s sub-optimal.
“We’re going to have a learn to swim facility that is deeper than desired for those opportunities, plus the water is going to be too cold for them, even in the summer because you’re going to keep it colder for the competitive swimmers.
“Diving and swimming end up in a natural battle because if they use the pool, they take away half the long course.”
Asbell admitted “the pool is deeper than a normal teach style pool. The shallowest point is 4’2” so what we will do is we will put in movable inserts onto the floor bottom at the shallow end of the pool.
“It’s very lightweight and it’s like a tiny trampoline.”
He said the Warwick Academy pool uses them.
Asbell said another solution is that children younger than eight could learn to swim at one of the three satellite pools — Warwick, Saltus or Sandys — before coming up to Aquatics Centre.”
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