Swimmers dive into national championships
Swimmers competing at last year’s championships
(CNS Local Life): The Cayman Islands Amateur Swimming Association (CIASA) is hosting the Cayman Islands National Swimming Championships starting today (Thursday, 16 February). This four-day meet, being held at the Camana Bay Aquatics Centre, is using the preliminaries and finals format that is common in international competition. Bailey Weathers, CIASA technical director, said of the event, “In an effort to continue to raise the standard for swimming in the Cayman Islands, the coaches from our three swim clubs all agree that Cayman’s swimmers will benefit from having a prelims and finals meet here at home.
“International meets such as CARIFTA Championships, CCCAN Championships, Island Games and the World Masters Championships use this format and our swimmers can better develop strategies that will allow them to swim fast in the preliminary heats, thus qualifying for the finals; and then proceed to swim faster in the finals. Our goal is to get Cayman swimming into as many finals as possible and this approach, which we have had success with over the last three years, continues to be a great way to prepare our swimmers to do so.”
This competition is also the last local meet at which Cayman’s CARIFTA hopefuls can achieve qualifying times for the pool events. The National Championships are for swimmers of all ages, including masters swimmers, and generally have 158 different events available.
Start times for today’s and Friday’s events are 8am for the prelims and 4:45pm for the finals. For the following two days, the prelims will begin at 8:30am and the finals at 4:45pm.
Unfortunately, Cayman Brac swimmers can not compete due to this 4 day format. Not considered. No surprise.