Ekurhuleni leaves aquatic stars in limbo

The Eastern Gauteng Aquatics (EGA), the district federation and custodian of aquatics in the district, has bemoaned the negative impact caused to the aquatic sports stars by the city’s failure to reopen two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

These include Boksburg North (indoor) and Delville (Germsiton) swimming pools.
Boksburg North is the only indoor heated facility in Gauteng, and both are categorised as A-grade facilities but currently do not present themselves as such.

The concerned parties expressed their frustrations that the municipality does not fix the Olympic-sized pools for their members to train for upcoming big competitions.

Boksburg North delayed reopening for the season due to long-standing defective heat pumps and pump motors. A water leak from the wall, running on the floor and spilling into the pool water, contaminates the pool water, thus making it unsafe for users.

The damaged heating system alone is approximately a R150 000 repair job, according to EGA. The federation said it had last season paid an electrician who spent about three weeks trying to repair the heating system. He could only fix two heat exchangers, but they are all broken due to lack of maintenance.

EGA president Cheryl Knight said they are concerned about the state of the swimming pools in the district, with many not being operational on September 1.
“In previous years, the pools were closed from April 1 until August 31, during which maintenance and repairs were carried out, but since 2020 this has not been the case.”

Knight pointed out that EGA has since November 2020 spent over R600 000 on operational costs, repairs and maintenance of pumps, heaters, heat exchangers, purchasing of coals, and getting drains unblocked because of sewage seepage for both the Boksburg North and Delville swimming pools.

“It is a large amount that could be going back into the development of the sport in our district.”
She lamented the negative impact the closure of pools has on both competitive swimming and the community.

“The municipal pools are used for swimming club squad training, community club squad training, school swimming, lifeguard refresher courses, airline personnel swimming courses, Learn to Swim instructor courses and for our community members that want to swim on a hot summer day.
“One of our oldest swimming clubs in the district, Boksburg Aquatics Saints, have not been able to use their home pool for more than a season due to the Boksburg North Swimming Pool not being on par.
“Swimming coaches in the district have to pay high monthly rental fees for access to private facilities to enable them to coach their swimmers.”

She said, apart from top swimmers, the closure of the facilities has also been detrimental to school swimming, as their teams have nowhere to train. At this stage, they will not be able to hold their inter-primary and inter-high school galas.

“School swimming is where talent identification takes place and from where the growth and development of swimming comes from. If the pools are closed, there is no follow-through for these swimmers.

“Our federation uses Boksburg North Pool in winter and Delville in summer. Both these swimming pools have been brand names throughout South Africa for many years among our aquatics community.

“Eastern Gauteng Aquatics boasts a world championship, world short course championship and Commonwealth games swimmer as well as two junior world championship swimmers for 2022 and 2023 and two junior Commonwealth games swimmers.

To get these swimmers to this level without up-to-standard facilities is a remarkable feat by our coaches and should be applauded.”

Knight said with the Paris Olympics just 11 months away and the South African nationals and Olympic trials six months away for the Olympic hopefuls, they have to ensure all their swimmers have the best possible chance to qualify for the biggest competition in the world and that would be to make sure that the local pools are of the highest standard.

“This past weekend, our swimmers had to endure racing in water temperatures of 18 degrees due to not only the heating system breaking down, but electricity cable theft, which left the area without electricity for 36 hours.
“The World Aquatics Federation rules for water temperature for both standard and Olympic competitions should be between 25 and 28 degrees.”

The Eastern Gauteng Aquatics appealed to the city to urgently act in getting the facilities to an acceptable standard.
“If we do not do something, I am afraid swimming as a sport will eventually die,” said the president.
The federation has previously petitioned the city demanding repairs and reopening of the historic public facility.

Hindrance
Chairperson of Ekurhuleni schools, Elita Domiter, expressed her disappointment and anger over being unable to use the facilities, saying its closure and poor conditions hinder the development and growth of swimming as a sport among youngsters across the city.

Domiter said the closure and poor upkeep of the two Olympic-sized swimming pools forced swimmers to prepare for the upcoming competitions and Olympics in 25m swimming pools.

“The closure has impacted a few of our schools, which use the pools as their training facilities. We cannot host our inter-primary and inter-high school swimming galas.

“We have to depend on private facilities to host these galas. The schools have to bear the costs of using these private facilities, and transport issues get more difficult for schools that are far away from those facilities.
“Also, those facilities lack enough space for parents to watch their children participating in those galas because they were made just for training, not for major galas.”
Domiter echoed Knight’s sentiments that in the past season, they were able to use these facilities because EGA pumped a lot of money into repairs to heat pumps and provided chlorine for Boksburg North.
“We would love the municipality to repair the heat exchangers at Boksburg North and get the water quality up to scratch so that the schools in the area can use the facility as their training facility and host our galas again.

“There were about three to four schools that used this as training facility because they don’t have pools at their schools. For our inter-school galas, we would have inter-primary A, B, C and D galas hosted here. And inter-high would be A and B.”

Upcoming events
Altogether, there are about 22 primary schools and 16 high schools that are part of the Ekurhuleni school district.
They will start their summer season at the beginning of October, with the first gala in the second week of October.

“We will have three league galas at various schools. Our inter-primary galas, which would have been hosted on the first week of November at Boksburg North, will now have to be hosted at different schools. We are grateful to these schools that have offered their facilities, but it is not fair on them to be hosting the inter-school galas.”

She added all those facilities only have 25m swimming pools, which is 50% smaller than the two city’s Olympic-sized 50m swimming pools in Boksburg North and Germiston.

“At our inter-primary in our fourth term, we get all our records, which are 33, which relate to Boksburg North, and those records go back to 20 years. Those records this year would not stand anymore and we will have to set up new records in a 25m swimming pool,” lamented Domiter.

Also Read: WATCH: Swimmers express disappointment over closed pools