Shawn Pouchet, Pres­i­dent of the Aquat­ics Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASATT), says dis­cus­sions have be­gun with three-time T&T Olympic swim­mer and three-time World Cham­pi­onship medal win­ner Dy­lan Carter to host a top-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al in­vi­ta­tion­al swim meet here in T&T.

Pouchet, who was elect­ed as pres­i­dent of ASATT late last year, was speak­ing on the fi­nal night of the swim­ming com­pe­ti­tion at the 38th edi­tion of the Carif­ta Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onship at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Tues­day, while the Open Wa­ter 5k event was held at the Five Is­lands Amuse­ment in Chagville, Ch­aguara­mas, on Wednes­day.

When the four days of swim­ming end­ed at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, Ba­hamas, made a suc­cess­ful de­fence of their team ti­tle with 979 points, with Ja­maica a dis­tant sec­ond with 795.5, and T&T third with 735, while the Cay­man Is­lands (477.5) and Aru­ba (469) com­plet­ed the top five na­tions.

T&T swim­mers tal­lied 57 medals (23 gold, 17 sil­ver and 17 bronze) for the sec­ond spot on the medal ta­ble, be­hind the Ba­hamas, who won 74 medals, in­clu­sive of 27 gold, 23 sil­ver and 24 bronze, while Ja­maica was third with 56 medals (21 gold, 19 sil­ver and 16 bronze), with the Cay­man Is­lands end­ing with 32 medals (13 gold, 10 sil­ver and nine bronze), the same as Bar­ba­dos, who se­cured 11 gold, nine sil­ver and 12 bronze.

Speak­ing on the suc­cess of host­ing the event, a beam­ing Pouchet said, “It was a chal­leng­ing ef­fort, but the as­so­ci­a­tion is re­al­ly proud of our per­for­mance both in and out of the pool, putting to­geth­er such a grand event in four months’ time ba­si­cal­ly.”

The lo­cal Aquat­ics boss not­ed that the event’s suc­cess would not have been pos­si­ble with­out every­one pulling in the same di­rec­tion and sin­gled out the T&T, the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T, the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the team of the Lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee with­in the as­so­ci­a­tion, as well as the spon­sors.”

He added, “Any­body who came to the event will tell you that the crowd sup­port was amaz­ing, the at­mos­phere was amaz­ing, and we are look­ing for­ward to host­ing in the near fu­ture.”

He added, “We were un­suc­cess­ful in our bid to­day in the Con­gress Meet­ing (Tues­day), but we are go­ing to put to­geth­er an­oth­er bid in time for 2028 to try and re­turn the games to T&T.

Among those in at­ten­dance were Pres­i­dent of World Aquat­ics Cap­tain Hu­sain Al-Musal­lam, Pan Am Aquat­ics Pres­i­dent Mau­reen Croes, and oth­er mem­bers of World Aquat­ics’ com­mit­tee, and ac­cord­ing to Pouchet, the lo­cal body is work­ing on es­tab­lish­ing mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships that will ben­e­fit the sport lo­cal­ly and the swim­mers.

He said, “The World Aquat­ics pres­i­dent was here, and we were thank­ful to have him, and we spoke a lot in terms of de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes for get­ting more peo­ple in­to the sport at the very base age of kinder­garten to pri­ma­ry school.”

“A lot of en­gage­ment was al­so held be­tween the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the ex­ec­u­tives of World Aquat­ics, as they have a lot of pro­grammes that they want to bring on board, and we are look­ing to work with them in the fu­ture.”

“The World Aquat­ics boss was al­so in­ter­est­ed in help­ing us de­vel­op our div­ing pro­gramme, and we are look­ing at mak­ing strate­gic al­liances with the T&T Gym­nas­tic Fed­er­a­tion, which we will be en­gag­ing af­ter this event.”

Based on the suc­cess of the Carif­ta Games, Pouchet said they are now tar­get­ing host­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al event with the help of Carter.

He ex­plained, “We are cur­rent­ly speak­ing close­ly with Dy­lan Carter, and while not want­i­ng to let too much out of the bag, we are hop­ing to do some sort of in­ter­na­tion­al in­vi­ta­tion­al meet where we can cre­ate a re­al­ly fes­tive at­mos­phere as well but al­so at­tract some of the top ath­letes in the West­ern Hemi­sphere to come down here and race.”

“We are look­ing at a time around the Swim­ming World Cup and will prob­a­bly do it in a short course where we can at­tract prob­a­bly some peo­ple in the re­gion to get a top-qual­i­ty short course meet.”

In gen­er­al, Pouchet said from the host­ing of the games, there was a lot of feed­back they got, most of which was pos­i­tive.

‘To­day (Tues­day) we ex­pe­ri­enced a bit of traf­fic, and it’s some­what un­avoid­able giv­en the prox­im­i­ty in terms of the ho­tels that we have, but we are hope­ful to get ac­com­mo­da­tion which is in much clos­er prox­im­i­ty to be able to host na­tions and events of this na­ture in the fu­ture.”

From a stand­point of per­for­mance, we have iden­ti­fied some short­com­ings in our per­for­mance which we have to ad­dress at a tech­ni­cal lev­el to up our per­for­mance in terms of the stand­ings on the ta­ble, and in terms of the pos­i­tives, there are many.

I would think that for us to con­tin­ue along the lines of be­ing in­clu­sive in our ap­proach and re­al­ly get­ting a lot of the com­mit­tees work­ing to­geth­er and meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of the as­so­ci­a­tion.”

With re­gards to the turnout of sup­port­ers, Pouchet said, “The crowd sup­port has been amaz­ing. I have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like that at a swim­ming event, and I have been to a few in the re­gion and world­wide as well.”

“You know, the Caribbean has a vibe, so it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of thing when we are all to­geth­er, but def­i­nite­ly what I saw to­day I think is the acoustics of a se­mi-in­door venue al­so helped, and we ba­si­cal­ly had a sound-off be­tween the Ba­hamas and T&T, and the fans were very pas­sion­ate, and the noise lev­el is a tes­ta­ment to why we got so many records in the pool, as it helped to spur the ath­letes on.”

Asked what the feed­back from the vis­it­ing coun­tries was, Pouchet replied,” “Most of the teams said they were hap­py with the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly from the li­aisons and vol­un­teers, as well as the friend­li­ness and warmth of our peo­ple. They love the venue; they love the fa­cil­i­ties. It’s one of the best in the west­ern hemi­sphere and just the pro­fes­sion­al way of how we do things as well as the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the meet, en­sur­ing that their in­ter­est was al­ways sought.”

He added, “Any­body who came to the event could tell you that the crowd sup­port was amaz­ing, the at­mos­phere was amaz­ing, and we are look­ing for­ward to host­ing in the near fu­ture.

“We were un­suc­cess­ful in our bid to­day in the Con­gress Meet­ing (Tues­day), but we are go­ing to put to­geth­er an­oth­er bid in time for 2028 to try and re­turn the games to T&T.