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Response to ‘Swimming Pool is a result of intense lobbying’

Aug 05, 2009 Sports

By Rawle Welch

In response to Miranda La Rose’s letter ‘Swimming Pool is a result of intense lobbying’ she failed to admit that at no time did I put forward or even imply that Guyana, or more directly, those who aspire to become involved in competitive swimming, is not deserving of an Olympic-size Pool.

Rather, I was merely stating that it should not be placed ahead of the creation of a synthetic track.

Ms. La Rose’s views on my article are not surprising since it is well known that she is integrally involved in the affairs of that fraternity for some time now, but to say that my commentary really boggled her mind because I am against the Government’s construction of a swimming pool is simply misleading.

In that article and previous ones I’ve always been consistent in saying that Guyana is in need of all relevant infrastructure to help develop every discipline possible.

In the August 2 piece, contained in the last paragraph, I stated that and I quote “it is not to say that Guyana is not deserving of such a pool, but as I’ve said in previous articles, when money is the issue, we have to be wise and prioritise.”

Nowhere in that sentence was the inference that I was against Government’s construction of a swimming pool.

With regards to her objection of my view that we will not be able to produce a swimmer the calibre of Trinidadian George Bovell III or Surinamese Anthony Nesty, I must admit that my only mistake there was to omit that we will not be able to do so in the near future.

Nothing is impossible and perhaps with the intended acquisition of the right size pool we may be able to even surpass their achievements, but that is realistically some time away.

Conversely, athletics has already proven that even at the international level, we could compete with the best, given the same opportunities.

Guyana has done significantly better in athletics than swimming, so to justify constructing a pool ahead of procuring a synthetic track, I repeat, is ‘cheese to chalk’.

The intense lobbying argument is a bit suspect, and this is not to say that it might not have occurred, but being someone who is privy to the effect of politics in sports, I would not be surprised to hear other reasons offered as the overriding factor for the pool’s construction.

Ms. La Rose, whom I have utmost regard for as an experienced and knowledgeable journalist and someone who I’ve had many interesting and stimulating discussions pertaining to my field of endeavour (sports) might not know of the many pronouncements made recently by both the Minister of Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, and the Director of Sport, Neil Kumar, where on occasions they spoke of the lack of adequate funds to do everything that needed to be done.

It is on this basis that I wrote about us needing to be wise and prioritise. So to say in her humble opinion that all sports facilities are priorities is not incorrect, but realistically, because of earlier disclosures by the two top officials, it is just not feasible, so we still need to prioritise.

In all fairness to the Minister, he did declare that the Ministry will be spending a huge sum of the disbursement from Central Government on the construction of new facilities and maintenance of those that already exist, but again because of limited financial resources, priority will be key.

In terms of my being described as myopic, I will refrain from responding to that until the context in which Ms. La Rose uses it is made clearer.

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