This post was written by SwimSwam contributor Kiersten Wollenzien.
Central Ontario club swim teams are gearing up to begin the season minus one key aspect: a championship pool. The Etobicoke Olympium, which regularly serves as a central hub for the region, was shut down in June in preparation for the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games and will be shut down for the entirety of the 2013-2014 season.
The pool is scheduled to be shut down from June 2013 (originally July) to July 2014 which means meets will need to be scheduled elsewhere or cancelled altogether. The Olympium typically hosts close to ten swim meets per season that will either have to find another home for the season or will not be run at all.
In the near future, the problem will be alleviated, with the renovations to the Etobicoke pool plus the brilliant new pool on the University of Toronto Scarborough project (the largest ever investment in amateur athletics in Canada), capacity in the area will soon be more than sufficient to support a thriving swimming scene.
But for now, with the Olympium shut down the region does not have another pool that has sufficient deck space for the number of swimmers that attend the championship meets of the region. At the moment there is not a plan for where these meets will be held, but the search for the pool to host is still in progress.
Teams in the region now have two choices: either cut down their meet schedule substantially or battle with one another to try to compete at meets that they usually do not attend outside of their area. The second choice comes at more of a cost to the teams themselves as well as the swimmers’ parents, which may affect the smaller teams of the region more so than the larger teams.
When the pool was shut down in June, three weeks before its original shut down date, swimmers were denied two scheduled meets and opportunities to qualify for provincial and national meets that were held later in the summer. This will be the same problem for swimmers in the central region this season that will have fewer chances to qualify for regionals, provincials, or nationals. This could mean more tapering for these athletes before meets or it could mean the same game plan with more pressure each meet.
There are more than enough 50 meter pools in Central Ontario to be used and are used by swimmers/clubs in Central Ontairo.
There are two 50 meter pools in London, another in Brantford, MacMaster University, Wilfred Laurier University, Owen Sound apparently has a new 50 meter pool, and there are more.
The Olympium is not the only pool in Central Ontario and to suggest this only feeds to the concept that Toronto is the center of Ontario, Canada, the universe.
Sorry to deflate the ballon
Pathetic.
For a city the size of Toronto there are only 2 50 meter pools! Now one of them is out of commission. It is wonder this province produces any high level swimmers at all with this overwhelming support.