Vin­ode Mam­chan

A world class aquat­ic cen­tre is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion at Bal­main, Cou­va, and this is ex­pect­ed to bring in tremen­dous rev­enue for the coun­try.

The idea, a brain­child of Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts, is ex­pect­ed to lead the way in terms of sports tourism and as cham­pi­on olympic swim­mer George Bovell III puts it: "There are many big coun­tries with big bud­gets look­ing to come to this part of the world to pre­pare for big games. Here in T&T we have all the nat­ur­al as­sets to make us at­trac­tive. We have love­ly beach­es, we have love­ly weath­er and what was miss­ing was a world class swim­ming fa­cil­i­ty. Now we have that on track and we are go­ing to put all the el­e­ments to­geth­er to make it work.

"Swim­mers the world over can now come to T&T and ex­pe­ri­ence the great weath­er, beach­es and have this bril­liant fa­cil­i­ty to pre­pare for big games. We have the 2016 Olympics in Brazil com­ing up and it would be great for ath­letes to come in­to T&T and qui­et­ly pre­pare for those games."

The fa­cil­i­ty, which is ear­marked for com­ple­tion in May 2015, would be FI­NA cer­ti­fied and will in­clude a full sized warm-up pool, a main com­pe­ti­tion pool and a div­ing pool. There will al­so be a dry-div­ing fa­cil­i­ty for use by chil­dren. The chil­dren will be able to per­fect the art of div­ing in foam be­fore they take to the wa­ter.

The Aquat­ic Cen­tre is next to the Cy­cling Velo­drome and the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um. It is al­so with­in close prox­im­i­ty to the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Cou­va, mak­ing the area the main hub of sports in the coun­try.

Bovell III, this coun­try's most dec­o­rat­ed swim­mer said he has been mak­ing an in­put in­to the de­vel­op­ment of the cen­tre and is very ex­cit­ed about it. "I have a con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing back­ground and giv­en the fact that I have swam in the best pools in the world, I have been able to make an in­put in the de­vel­op­ment of the cen­tre."

Bovell III said the pool was promised to him since 2003 and he is great­ful that he is still in­volved in the sport to use it when it's com­plet­ed. "Since 2003 I was promised an Olympic size swim­ming pool and noth­ing hap­pened. I re­mem­ber I used to joke and say that it will be called the 'George Bovell III Memo­r­i­al Swim­ming Pool' and I would nev­er be able to use it.

"I am hap­py now that we are get­ting this world class fa­cil­i­ty in Cou­va and that I am still in­volved in the sport, so I can train right here. I must say it speaks to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the min­is­ter of Sports Anil Roberts, in that he can sway the gov­ern­ment of the day to build this fa­cil­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment must al­so be con­grat­u­lat­ed for the fact that they are putting their mon­ey where their mouth is."