BENGALURU: Swimming has been the most-affected sport in India ever since the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the country last year. With pools remaining closed amidst the lockdown, swimmers could not even take a plunge in the water for a long time.
However, with restrictions having mostly eased throughout the country, the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) is set to commence its calendar in Bengaluru. The 37th sub-junior and 47th junior national aquatic championships will be held from Tuesday in the city. The senior meet is set to begin from October 26. All the swimming events will be conducted at the Basavanagudi Aquatic Centre (BAC). Diving and water polo will be held at Kensington Swimming Pool and Nettakallappa Aquatic Centre, respectively.
More than 1200 athletes are expected to take part. The junior meet holds extra importance as the SFI will be keeping a close eye to select probables for a 10-member team to South Africa for a training camp.
"The SFI will be selecting the probable swimmers from the junior national aquatic championships for a 10-member team for the upcoming joint training camp with the South African junior squad in early 2022," said SFI secretary-general Monal Chokshi.
Though the swimming body announced the dates for these nationals in August, it was a challenge for both the SFI and the state units to prepare. Gradually, the state championships were also held, thus paving the way to send their respective teams and best swimmers for the prestigious competition at both the junior and senior levels.
"This has been a huge challenge (with Covid-19 situation), particularly for swimming as a sport and recreation in India. Even today when roughly the second wave was waning, we felt we should start the calendar because training had virtually stopped. Swimmers were demotivated. 2022 is a big year with Asian Games, World Championships etc, and the calendar has to be full of events for our athletes to come back to form and we are starting with the national championship," said Chokshi.
The SFI official added they are not expecting great performances like the previous nationals as many have not had proper training. As a result, SFI has been lenient on the selection procedure for this national. Regardless of whether they achieved qualification time or not, the two best swimmers from each state unit were considered. The Covid-19 situation might have vastly improved of late, compared to March-April and even last year, but the organisers are not taking things lightly. Needless to say, the Karnataka Swimming Association have strict protocols in place. Swimmers will need to bring a negative RT-PCR test result 72 hours prior to departing for Bengaluru. There are two separate booths for rapid antigen tests too.
"With almost every other sport resuming activities, only swimming seemed to suffer. Through this nationals, we also want to express to people that swimming is a safe sport to pursue and the event will be held following all the protocols," said Gopal B Hosur, Karnataka Swimming Association president.