The Guyana Amateur Swimming Association has detailed a strategy that includes improving relationships both locally and regionally in 2023 as well as medaling at regional and international tournaments as part of its 2023 vision.
In a recent interview, president of the body, Dwayne Scott explained, “The goal this year is to strengthen our relationship with the administrative bodies from an administrative side, strengthen our local relationships and partnerships and make sure our athletes can show better performances in the regional and international outings.”
Scott reasoned, “One of the challenges we had last year had to be with our performances at the CARIFTA Games, our performance at the South American Games and, while they were decent outings, we came back empty handed so we are driving a programme this year to ensure we can bring back something tangible from at least the CARIFTA Games and also the Goodwill Games that happens later down in the year so we already have placed the key talent that we know can do outstanding performances but the goal now is to build a formidable team that can allow us to perform better out there.”
At the Inter-Guiana Games, Guyana copped 39 medals including 19 gold with Latisha Blair breaking the national 50m backstroke record in a time of 32.80 seconds.
Scott namedropped the likes of Gladwin Woodroffe, Elliott Gonsalves, Zara Crane and Ariel Rodrigues as some of the prospects for the future while revealing that the body has “longlisted” 29 athletes as part of its developmental plan, divided in tiers.
“Now the goal is to harness them and build that because after this phase and Olympics coming up in 2026, we have to start working on creating new talent. We know that [Leon] Seaton is still there, we know that Aleka [Persaud] is still there, now we have to build a formidable team around them so we can actually put forward a relay team within the region but also work to ensure they have training partners locally who can also drive them,” he added.
