Sean Baksh, National Senior Coach is confident of Guyana’s chances at the upcoming Goodwill Caribbean Junior Swimming Championships set for August 18th-21st.
Countries expected to invade Guyana for the 23rd staging of the championships are Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia, Grenada and The Bahamas.
The event was launched in February this year.
Baksh during an invited comment said, “We have some good swimmers that can medal and hold their own in the pool. We have the Winter siblings, Leon Seaton, Aleka Persaud just to name a few but we expect some medals and for the athletes to go out and perform.”
He added, “Training is going good, I have four other coaches with me and we are ensuring that they do the drills they need to ahead of the time trials after which we hope to cut the 65 we have training to 40 but so far the weather has been making it a bit difficult.
“It’s not necessarily the weather but persons not turning up because of the weather, once there is lightning and thunder there is no training but persons that come from far want to get home because of the weather.”
Baksh said he expects competition to be fierce, adding, “Trinidad always comes to win at this meet and we have invited Bahamas who has a lot of talent then there is Jamaica and
Barbados that always does well too but we expect good competition, Suriname will also be here but we have swimmers that will do well too.”
According to Baksh, the tournament is very important as it is the only developmental event in the Caribbean.
“It really is a test to see where our swimmers are a head of Carifta and that is what it is for so we can then go and improve a head of Carifta,” Baksh said.
