Swimmers from the Dorado and Dolphins Speed Swim Clubs are gearing up for their participation at the upcoming Amateur Swimming Association of Trinidad and Tobago (ASATT) Invitational from December 16 – 19.
Four swimmers from Dorado, including Olympian Niall Roberts, have been confirmed to participate in the event, and for Dolphins Jaime Jabar has also been confirmed while Kevon DeMoura is named as a possible participant pending sponsorship. The other swimmers for Dorado are Athena and Hannibal Gaskin and Soroya Simmons.
Roberts, Jabar and DeMoura are expected to use this meet to make qualifying times for the Pan American Games next year, while Athena said that she will be taking this opportunity to qualify for the Junior CARIFTA Games.
Speaking with Stabroek Sport yesterday Roberts and Jabar said that they feel they are prepared for the event, and stressed that their focus will be on qualifying for Pan Am. Both stated that they have been putting in vigorous training with the hopes of churning out satisfactory results.
This will be Jabar’s first time at the event, he said, and he is expected to participate in 50m and 100m breaststroke, the 50m and 100m freestyle and the 50m butterfly. Should he attend DeMoura will also be participating in the same events.
“I hope I make the timings because I’ve been putting in a lot of hard work, and I’m really focusing on making Pan Am times, and if I get a medal or so on the way there I’ll be happy. I’m just glad I got the opportunity to go and I want to say thank you to my sponsors,” Jabar said. Jabar is sponsored by Sterling Products, Neal and Massy and House of Optics.
Coach for Dolphins, Christopher Mc Adam, stated that the club had hoped to be able to have more swimmers attend the event but the financial limitations did not allow.
“At present we only have one swimmer who has been confirmed. We would have liked to have more swimmers attend but financially we can’t afford it. Initially we had a group of about nine swimmers who wanted to go but we had to cut it down,” Mc Adam said.
Roberts, packing wide experience, will be participating in the 50m and 100m freestyle, the 50m and 100m butterfly, and the 50m backstroke and breaststroke events. Roberts said that he will not be focusing too much on the latter two events as he only recently restarted training for these.
“Everything has been going good with training, we’re coming down on the mileage and working on sprints. I’ve stopped my working out in the park, but I’ll still be doing a bit at home, like pushups, crunches, squats and stuff like that,” Roberts said.
Despite having to practice in the 25m pool and compete in the 50m pool, Roberts said that he does not expect this to affect him too much as he expects to use his experience to counter that.
“I’ve had quite some experience in the 50m pool so I’m a bit comfortable in gauging my speed in the 50m pool.
But it will always take some getting used to because we are not accustomed to the 50m pool,” Roberts said.
For Athena this will not be her first time either, since she had participated in the event in 2008. Athena recalls that while she was not able to medal then, she did improve her timings.
