Over five months after the promised October reopening, the Colgrain Swimming Pool remains closed, leaving swimmers and coaches baffled about when they can resume training at the facility as the swim season progresses.
The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport had said that the pool’s closure in June was due to a damaged filter tank. In July, Permanent Secretary Alfred King had confirmed that a three-month contract was awarded to Fyffe Con-struction Company to replace the filter tanks and the deck and driveway would also have been upgraded. Also, King had said that the works would have been completed by October month-end or earlier.
After its failure to open at the set time, in January, King said the delays were because the “filter tank that is needed at the facility had to be specially produced because suppliers don’t shelve those.” He had then gauged that the tanks would arrive within “two to three weeks” and it would have taken another week to be installed. He then reportedly said that the deadline would have been extended by one month’s time. However, that time passed and when this newspaper contacted King last week he said that the pool is being put through a test run and will be opened shortly.
The newspaper also learnt that the filter tank had only been installed last month while the other works had been completed. Now with one fourth of the year already past, stakeholders of the varying swimming clubs are now hopeful that it would be opened shortly.
However, some coaches pointed out that severe damage has already been done to the sport. “We used the pool to do the club sessions, now the club sessions are important for keeping the club alive, with the pool closed we can’t do anything. We would normally have new swimmers coming into the club but you can’t expand or develop,” one coach explained.
Others feared the Colgrain Pool seems to have been put on hold like the 50m Olympic-sized swimming which is also still to be commissioned over three years after construction first began in January 2008. The Colgrain Pool is the main facility that is used by all major swimming clubs and the only other available facility id the Castellani Pool, controlled by the Office of the President. This pool is only available to the national swimmers for usage during the early morning hours and an official from the Dolphins Swim Club noted that most of the competitive swimmers in the club were in the younger age categories, particularly the under-8 age group, and they could not use the pool during the stipulated hours. “The bulk of our competitive swimmers are in the younger age group, we have about four swimmers in the eight and under category who can be described as competitive swimmers, but they can’t swim anymore because their parents won’t bring them out at 5:30am in the morning to use Castellani,” the official said, adding that the afternoon sessions were convenient as parents could drop them off after school.
The official also said that several of the younger swimmers have now moved on to other sport such as badminton and tennis while others have advanced out of their age category and haven’t been training.
It was also noted that several swimming competitions have been poorly attended as swimmers did not compete as they have been unable to train.
