National records need scaling up as base widens

There has undoubtedly been a marked upsurge in local swimming standards in recent times, reflected mostly by numerous records in the four age categories from ten-year to 17-year olds in both the male and female sectors.

This improvement has largely been due to the setting up of the ASA Swimming Board and the work done at nurseries and swim schools in various localities represented by swimming clubs and spanning a good cross-section of the island, even if other areas especially in the central parts of Malta, are unfortunately still untapped.

Besides the facilities available at these clubs, there is the National Swimming Complex at Tal-Qroqq which attracts a number of aspiring and national team swimmers during the colder months and leading up to a peak, normally in May and June.

The well-equipped MFA heated pool at the Millennium Stand is also serving as another convenient reference point for youngsters who are in the phases of learning. This is evident from the good numbers who frequent the place.

What is now needed is a wider base of swimmers.

In this respect, a necessary venue would be a shallow heated pool where the very young can be given rudimentary lessons in buoyancy and movement before they are passed on to a deeper pool.

The Sports Promotion Unit (SPU), through the Kunsill Malti għall-Isport (KMS) can play a vital role in this venture.

Meanwhile, dedicated club coaches and tutors run training sessions at several venues, including the pool at Razzett Tal-Ħbiberija.

Regular time-trials at Tal-Qroqq are awaited appointments for the swimmers from the five clubs. The performances of the boys and girls during these swim meets give an indication of the progress achieved by them. The same applies for the national team swimmers guided by coach Andy Colbourn.

This ongoing activity is complemented by the participation of several swimmers at international events both overseas and locally, besides training camps that are held.

Personal bests are the rewards for most of these swimmers, with success in competition and breaking of records being the ultimate they will aspire for.

In this respect, a brief statistical overview of the individual records reveals that about 40% of those at the age-group levels have been standing for 10 years or longer, in comparison with 18% of those in the senior category.

This gives the impression that the turnover of new marks is brisker at this latter level than it is for the younger age brackets.

But, in order not to be presented with a distorted picture, one has to assess these figures against the fact that, whereas the total number of individual races in the male and female age-groups is 86, the number at senior level is 34.

In this context it must be said that last year there was a decline in the rate of new marks by the seniors in relation to those posted in the four age categories, apart from those set by the Maltese-Australians, Ryan Gambin and Madeleine Scerri. Between them, they re-wrote the record books in no fewer than 10 events in 2008.

The national records established this season were four. These were in the 50 and 100 metres breaststroke for men and 50 metres breaststroke for women through Andrea Agius (31.06 and 1:09.23) and 35.62 by Francesca Paolella respectively, while recently Neil Agius erased his old mark established at the 2005 World Championships in Montreal by 1.10 seconds when covering the 800 metres in 8:52.04.

These four new national marks have been a welcome addenda to those recorded by the youngsters in the age-groups this season.

Given the form being shown by some swimmers at this stage, there are good prospects that the seniors will be able to keep up the momentum of overall progress through more national records.

However, a comparative study of this upward trend will have to be made against that of swimmers from other small nations in order to assess our improvement in real terms. The absolute gauge is comparing our rate of progress with that elsewhere.

This is mostly reflected in the scaling up of national records to bring them relatively in line with those of swimmers in similarly-sized countries.

The road to progress is dedication, hard work and support for our swimmers from all quarters.