After finishing a disappointing third place last year, Team Guyana under coach Christopher Mc Adam is aiming to use home pool advantage to its fullest as it prepares for this weekend’s Inter- Guiana Games (IGG) at the Castellani Pool.
French Guiana are the defending champions while Suriname finished second. While Mc Adam did not state whether team Guyana will win the title, he said that a high level of competitiveness is expected. However like most of the other disciplines (football and athletics) Mc Adam said that the time for preparation had been minimal because of the school exams.
He said that out of the 31-day preparation period, most of the swimmers had missed more than 15 days of training because of school exams and only three of the 12 swimmers have gone the distance without hindrance.
But he is not taking that as an excuse for under-performance since most of the selectees are seasoned swimmers.
“The exams have cost us dearly and we only got most of our training in over the school holidays and that still wasn’t good enough, but looking to this team I think they will go out and perform their best,” said Mc Adam.
Meanwhile, 17-year-old Olympian Nial Roberts will spearhead Guyana’s title chase while Henk and Allan Lowe will form favourable support to Roberts who is just off of competition at this year’s CARFITA games swim meet in Aruba.
“Nial cannot do it alone. Looking back at some of his performances and most recently at the CARIFTA games, I think he needs to improve just a few seconds on his timings. However a lot indeed will depend on him since he is no doubt the best swimmer on the team, but I have seen some timings from last year and so on and I think his work is cut out,” said Mc Adam.
Unlike the championship last year, the committee has decided that the male and female competitors would have their own points tally. Even though Guyana finished third last year, most of the points came from the men while the women buckled.
Most of last year’s team has never swum in a 50-meter pool and were intimidated since they were only accustomed to using the 25- metre facility at Castellani Pool but the coach is certain that since they are at home this year, a better performance is expected. Apart from Noelle Smith, Britney Van Lange and Stepheny De Nobrega, the other females (Seriah La Rose, Areyah Payne and Athena Gaskin) are relatively new to this type of competition. “Even though I was not part of the coaching team for last year, I was around them and I think that I have a better unit. I think the females are better than last year’s and if this team can just perform as how I know they can, I think we will do so well,” the swim coach said confidently.
This will be the first outing as national coach for Mc Adam, who also coaches the Dolphin Speed Swim Club.