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Archive - Archive 2004 - July 2013

Coach Albert resigns, national team training resumes today-Swimming |07 January 2013

Although Albert did not want to reveal the real reasons that have forced him to quit the job, Sports Nation has learnt that the former swimmer was not on good and speaking terms with other local coaches and some members of the Seychelles Swimming Association (SSA) executive committee.

Albert took charge of the Seychelles national team in September 2010 after having worked as acting head coach for 18 months.

 His last day of work was on December 31, 2012.
 
Albert is a level-three coach after studying under the International Support Programme for African and Caribbean Sport (Paisac) programme and the Canadian National Coaching Accreditation programme in Canada in 2007.

 He was to sit for level-four certification last year.

When he took charge of the team in 2010, Albert, who started coaching in 2001 and had worked with two foreign coaches – Australian Murray Allen and Venezuelan Manuel Marin Mendoza – and Seychellois Paul Fanchette, told Sports Nation he was confident he can meet people's expectations.

Albert was one of the best Seychellois swimmers alongside Kenny Roberts, Benjamin Lopinto and Jean-Paul Adam.

 He joined the trio to win a 4x200m relay bronze medal at the seventh All-Africa Games in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1999.

His assistant Annette Adeline Monthy has also resigned.

To date, the SSA has not found a replacement for Albert, but there are talks that a foreigner will be brought in to take charge of national team training.

Meanwhile, training for all groups of swimmers – national team, junior team and stroke improvement – resumes today and the SSA has said that coaches Paul Fanchette, Jack Monnaie and Marcel Antat will work with the swimmers.

English coach Keith Bewley was tasked with the mission of improved the Seychelles swimming structure and he spent six weeks here late last year to gain first-hand experience of the challenges and opportunities facing the sport.

Before he left Seychelles in December, coach Bewley, who was previously head coach of Swim Ireland and responsible for the setting up of Ireland's first high performance swimming centre at the University of Limerick, presented an improved swimming structure to the SSA executive committee, swimmers, parents and all involved with swimming.

Among his proposals are that training is intensified with more sessions even on Saturdays, more young swimmers migrating to different groups including the junior and national teams.

English coach Bewley, who is here under the Olympic Solidarity’s development of national sports structure programme, said before leaving that “although 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, Mr Bewley noted 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.

G. G.

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