Eight swim­mers from the Tor­pe­does Swim Team (TST) will be com­pet­ing in the Am­a­teur Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Sub­way Mara­cas Open Wa­ter Clas­sic on Sun­day.

The 2018 edi­tion of the event, one of the longest run­ning open wa­ter com­pe­ti­tions in the re­gion, will fea­ture races in dis­tances of 1,000m, 3,000m and 5,000m.

Tor­pe­does swim­mers Virsnelit Fau­re, Xavier Razac and Alex Ali will com­pete in the 3,000m cat­e­go­ry, while Ser­e­na Emanuel­son, Madi­son Sad­low, Keon Sandy, Javier Thomp­son, and Graeme Wait­he-Tou­s­saint will get their feet wet in the 1000m cat­e­go­ry.

TST coach Sharn­telle McLean said the swim­mers spent sev­er­al train­ing hours, in­ter­spersed with ad­e­quate rest pe­ri­ods, prepar­ing for the event. She said the train­ing al­so helped the swim­mers pre­pare for some of the ob­sta­cles they may face, such as bump­ing around cor­ner marks and hav­ing their gog­gles knocked aside, and is con­fi­dent that they are well pre­pared for Sun­day’s event.

McLean, her­self a two-time Olympian, said the event has grown since she com­pet­ed, as it is more in­te­grat­ed in­to the Caribbean and re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tions. She said some swim­mers ac­tu­al­ly pre­fer swim­ming in open wa­ter than in a pool, so the com­pe­ti­tion gives them an­oth­er event to tar­get.

Razac, Ali, Sad­low and Sandy have pre­vi­ous­ly com­pet­ed in the Mara­cas Open Wa­ter Swim, but this would be the first time for the oth­er mem­bers of the TST con­tin­gent.

Tor­pe­does Swim Team T&T (for­mer­ly Tor­pe­does Swim Club) was found­ed over 25 years ago by coach Ronald Corke and op­er­ates sev­en days per week out of the La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph. The club al­so runs two ses­sions of a learn- to- swim de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gramme on Sat­ur­days at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, which pro­vides a good foun­da­tion for pre-com­pet­i­tive swim­mers and those who even­tu­al­ly wish to tran­si­tion in­to com­pet­i­tive swim­ming.

TST’s learn to swim de­vel­op­men­tal and com­pet­i­tive pro­grammes were es­tab­lished to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­mu­ni­ties through the sport. The pro­grammes fo­cus on build­ing tech­nique, skills, strength and en­durance, and are de­signed to help young peo­ple de­vel­op their in­di­vid­ual po­ten­tial in the sport. It al­so pro­vides a good foun­da­tion for novice swim­mers who wish to go on to com­pete at the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.

TST coach­es build foun­da­tion­al skills of their swim­mers by en­sur­ing their pro­gramme fo­cus­es on tech­niques such as time man­age­ment, stress man­age­ment, ef­fec­tive meth­ods of study­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion, self-re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty, which will en­able the swim­mers to com­fort­ably meet the de­mands of dai­ly train­ing.