Swimming: Catching up with the best
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Strange are the ways how opportunities shape our lives. When Englishman John Boland arrived at the 1896 Olympics as a spectator he had little idea that fate had already reserved the first tennis singles gold in his name.
It was a friend of Boland who had quietly included his name in the participants’ list, not he himself, but he quickly grasped there was an opportunity in it and made it count. Despite a lack of preparation, and on the spur of the moment, he gave it a shot.
Boland’s image flashed in the back of my mind when I watched a gripping competition in swimming in the 25-metre pool at Global Public School, set in the beautiful environs of Thiruvaniyur, half-an-hour’s drive from Kochi.
There were at least 225 participants in the 6-17 age-group from nearly 13 schools. Surprisingly, only a handful of these schools had pools in their campus and yet they taught swimming.
It meant that, apart from a few proven swimmers like national participant Rita Orison and state champs Maria Philomina, Kavya Ramachandran and Ruhy Dolakhia, a majority of the rest came with very little practice, but more determination.
“Seeing the surge of competition in these kids is truly inspiring. Only three or four schools, including ours, have pools. Yet when the competition is held, you can see hundreds of them coming to give a real fight. Isn’t that worth an applause?” asked S. Bhagya, swimming instructor of the host school.
As she spoke, a race had begun and it could be seen that from the word go, the first two lanes were splashing upfront. But the contestants in the other lanes, all of them beginners, had a hard time catching up.
“Come on, you can swim faster,” a parent ran around the lane to cheer up her ward; and the spectators made a chorus, cheering up those left behind even while the other two finished their races.
“We need to motivate our kids and tell them they are doing fine. Not every school has pools and trainers. My boy showed interest in swimming a couple of months back. As his school did not have a pool, we took him to the regional sports centre for coaching,” said Asha, parent of a participant.
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