Swimming -New talents to spring up in weekend’s swim meet |22 November 2012

The swimmers will compete in the Roche Caïman Olympic-size (50m) pool in the four strokes – butterfly, freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke – over distances of 50m and 100m. Competition will start at 4.30pm on Saturday November 23 and will resume at 9.30am the following day.

Only competition can tell the best performers and it will be interesting to watch the swimmers compete against each other and the clock.

English coach Keith Bewley, who is here under the Olympic Solidarity’s development of national sports structure programme, had this to say prior to the competition: “Checking the previous best times, it is clear the Seychelles team has a long way to go to be competitive with other national teams but with this fine facility and a lot of hard work anything is possible.”

A former British Olympic coach and here to guide the Seychelles swimming, Mr Bewley added that when he was first appointed as a full-time coach with his country’s national team he only had five swimmers and one lane in a crowded pool. But six years later, four of his swimmers made Olympic finals and two of them gained relay silver medals.

“There is a lot to take in and I will be making a full report to the committee in a few weeks’ time,” added coach Bewley.

Meanwhile, any swimmers who have their four-star certificate and would like to try out for the stroke improvement classes are welcome for a trial any weekday at 5pm.

Meanwhile, four swimmers, namely Adam Viktora, Pierre-André Adam, Aurelie Fanchette and Felicity Passon, have been selected for next month’s 11th Fina world short course championships in Istanbul, Turkey. They will all be in action this weekend and will be hoping among others to go further and reach the Commonwealth Games in 2014.