On Sat­ur­day on Is­ports, we had to read the shock­ing news that the an­nu­al Sec­ondary Schools Swim Meet—sched­uled for Sun­day—had to be can­celled be­cause the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre was not in a safe con­di­tion for spec­ta­tors, swim­mers, or coach­es.

​This is not good news. At a time when we con­tin­ue to wit­ness soar­ing in­ter­est in Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball na­tion­wide, our young swim­mers have been thrown aside by a sim­ple lack of care and con­cern.

​The Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) is re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the aquat­ic cen­tre. Their of­fices are lo­cat­ed less than a two-minute walk from the venue in Cou­va. How could this hap­pen just 24 hours be­fore the event, when so many young ath­letes were putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on their prepa­ra­tion for this an­nu­al swim­ming meet? Can you imag­ine the dis­ap­point­ment for these young­sters?

​Fur­ther­more, does “can­celled” mean it hasn’t even been post­poned to a lat­er date, forc­ing them to miss an en­tire year of these cham­pi­onships? This is not good. SporTT con­stant­ly calls for ac­count­abil­i­ty from oth­ers—and right­ful­ly so—so now they must be held ac­count­able!

​Just as they ex­pect sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to get their af­fairs to­geth­er and sub­mit au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, SporTT must be held to the same stan­dard. The Min­is­ter needs to ad­dress this. He needs to find out from SporTT what went wrong. Why did they not main­tain the aquat­ic pool?

​I un­der­stand the pool wa­ter had turned green. Was it be­cause they lacked the ba­sic chem­i­cal sup­plies to treat it? Was there a me­chan­i­cal fail­ure some­where? And why did they wait un­til Sat­ur­day, the day be­fore the event, to make the an­nounce­ment?

​Par­ents and young ath­letes would have been trau­ma­tised. To me, the word “can­celled” im­plies it won’t hap­pen at all this year, and I hope that is not true. I hope they find a way to resched­ule this event be­cause hand­ing down this lev­el of dis­ap­point­ment to young cit­i­zens, young sports­men and sports­women is not good for the fu­ture of T&T.

​I hope we hear pos­i­tive news soon from the Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts, as he in­ves­ti­gates this mat­ter, re­solves the is­sue, and gives our young ath­letes an­oth­er chance to swim. Com­pet­i­tive swim­ming builds dis­ci­pline and char­ac­ter. Can you imag­ine train­ing for al­most an en­tire year—ten months—on­ly to have your big mo­ment pulled out from un­der you at the last sec­ond?

​I high­light all of this to point out a glar­ing con­tra­dic­tion: over the last 15 years, we have been con­stant­ly sold on the idea of Sports Tourism in this coun­try be­cause of our world-class fa­cil­i­ties. Yet, while we watch sta­di­um af­ter sta­di­um fall in­to de­plorable states—such as Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um (where the stands are lit­er­al­ly falling apart), Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, and to a less­er ex­tent Ato Boldon Sta­di­um—the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre was al­ways seen as a bea­con of hope. And it sits di­rect­ly un­der the nose of SporTT’s ad­min­is­tra­tors on the very same com­pound.

So, I did some re­search on the main­te­nance of a swim­ming pool, and the fol­low­ing is what I ob­tained on­line.

Swim­ming pool main­te­nance re­quires a com­bi­na­tion of reg­u­lar phys­i­cal clean­ing, chem­i­cal bal­anc­ing, and equip­ment up­keep to stay safe and clear. Keep­ing a pool pris­tine comes down to three main pil­lars: cir­cu­la­tion, clean­ing, and chem­istry.

Here is every­thing re­quired to prop­er­ly main­tain a swim­ming pool:

​Chem­i­cal Test­ing & Bal­anc­ing: Pool wa­ter re­quires test­ing 1-2 times a week. San­i­tiz­ers (like chlo­rine) pre­vent bac­te­ria and al­gae growth; pH ad­justers (in­creasers/de­creasers) keep lev­els be­tween 7.2 and 7.6; to­tal al­ka­lin­i­ty sta­bilis­ers pre­vent sud­den pH swings; and week­ly pool shock treat­ments burn off con­t­a­m­i­nants.

​Phys­i­cal Clean­ing: Reg­u­lar man­u­al care pre­vents stain­ing and fil­ter clogs. This re­quires us­ing skim­mer nets to clear sur­face de­bris, pool brush­es to scrub walls and steps to stop al­gae buildup, and vac­u­ums to clean dirt from the pool floor.

​Hard­ware & Fil­tra­tion Care: Me­chan­i­cal sys­tems must run ef­fi­cient­ly. Pumps need to op­er­ate 8 to 12 hours dai­ly to fil­ter the to­tal vol­ume of wa­ter, fil­ters re­quire reg­u­lar back­wash­ing or car­tridge rins­ing, and skim­mer bas­kets must be emp­tied week­ly so wa­ter flows freely.

​So I must ask: are any of these ba­sic stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures be­ing fol­lowed by those re­spon­si­ble for pool main­te­nance at SporTT?

​Mean­while, all the lofty talk about Sports Tourism over the last 13 years seems a joke now af­ter yet an­oth­er fail­ure to main­tain our flag­ship aquat­ic venue.

Sports can gen­er­ate wider eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties link­ing com­pe­ti­tions and train­ing ac­tiv­i­ties with tourism, in­vest­ment and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. When a team ar­rives on our shores, there will be a lot of ac­tiv­i­ty from which many out­side the realm of sports will ben­e­fit.

Apart from in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments, uni­ver­si­ties with swim­ming club com­pe­ti­tions, train­ing camps and coach­ing clin­ics are ac­tiv­i­ties that could help build a con­sis­tent events cal­en­dar, in­clud­ing dur­ing slow­er sport­ing pe­ri­ods us­age in T&T and the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre can pro­vide that.

If this is prop­er­ly co­or­di­nat­ed, ho­tels can de­vel­op pack­ages and Caribbean Air­lines will be able to work to as­sess po­ten­tial de­mand and bring added val­ue.

As I con­clude, what is a Hal­loween hor­ror show for our young swim­mers on get­ting that news of­fi­cial­ly on Sat­ur­day, Oc­to­ber 31, and the young swim­mers all shout­ing in their night­mares: “Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter ... we can’t swim ... we can’t swim!” I pray and hope that this mat­ter can be solved short­ly by good sense and lots of care for our youth.