Obesity and swimming records

The National Pool has functioned for 16 short and hugely successful years. Besides fostering and pushing waterpolo talent to peaks of international levels undreamed of by its football equivalent, it also engendered an exponential increase in pure swimming activity.

This activity starts sharply at 5.30 a.m. My 10-year-old son is there at 5.45 - 7.15 a.m. and 4 - 6 p.m. with his club team.

I am there with a bunch of other Master swimmers at a similar time in the mornings and Saturdays.

This awkward timing is necessary because 95 per cent of the pool is reserved for waterpolo only during 6 - 9 p.m.

Waterpolo remains the priority at the National Pool because it and the 1993 GSSE Games created the pool.

Back then, local swimming greats were severely handicapped because of no year-round pool availability period.

Despite these limitations, this excellent pool has produced local swimming champions, international level triathletes, a long distance swimmer now training to cross the British Channel and top-notch coach Isabelle Zarb who has just returned from a course in the US under the tutelage of her personal coach being Michael Phelps himself.

School children and swimmers of all sorts of abilities and disabilities can now use these facilities previously undreamed of.

It is because of training in this pool that I, along with 40 or so others, swam across the Gozo - Malta Channel this summer raising thousands of euros for charity.

The very success of this sole Olympic-size pool in Malta has now outgrown its current size and availability.

The sport has evolved so much that we, as a nation, need to rethink and push on to further its success. I propose as immediate short-term measures to:

• Extend its opening times from 5 a.m. - 11 p.m. instead of 5.30 a.m. - 9 p.m. If demand keeps increasing then one should consider 24-hour availability.

• Turn the diving pool into a swimming pool. Diving has not picked up and it is a screaming shame to let this pool idle in winter.

If we demolish the diving board section this will increase the available surface area and the material excavated can be used to make this diving pool shallower and, therefore, cheaper to run.

This would reward the whole nation with another sorely-needed pool at a minimal capital cost.

If this is not an option then, please, let us use it at it is all year round.

Exacerbating unavailability, the pool is scheduled to close down on November 22 for maintenance that will last about two months.

True, our best swimmers are not yet up to scratch with the best of the best internationally but, please, let us not stall their progress.

National records are being regularly broken at all levels every three weeks during swim meets at the National Pool.

Two swimmers have just returned from a swim meet in Sheffield, UK where they broke 12 national records. Our athletes are national heroes who richly deserve the nation's backing.

I know they give their hearts out every session holding nothing back.

Let us do the same and further the evolution of this fantastic sport.

Swimming superpowers like the US and Australia back their athletes with a total guaranteed in-house package aimed at their scholastic, sporting and nutritional excellence.

Our national swimming team, on the other hand, helps subsidise the ASA by an out-of-pocket financial contribution to help pay for their entrance into the pool area and their twice daily coaching, which, incidentally, also starts at 6 a.m. sharp followed by another session at 4 p.m.

Maybe granting the national swimmers free entrance to the pool and coaching is too much but, at least, give the nation decent pool availability; nothing more.

Certainly, the winter running of this extra pool will be at a cost but the time of linear thinking is past. We have just won the greatest no prize of all.

Our children have recently been certified as the most obese in Europe and our hospital is bursting at the seams with patients and waiting lists.

The government, I hear, is considering granting free fruit to children to promote healthy eating.

The operation of this extra pool will help further engender healthy lifestyles away from fast food and weak hearts. Building a healthy nation costs money but which will, in the long run, repay itself many times over by reducing the ever-inflating national health bill.