Limpopo Aquatics hails successful swimming championships

Following their successful hosting of the South African Regional Level 2 Championship at the Polokwane municipal swimming pool last weekend, Limpopo Aquatics has been awarded the rights by Swimming South Africa to host the event in the city for the next three years.
The announcement was made by Vice President of Limpopo Aquatics and competition manager for provincial swimming events, Rob Anderson on Tuesday.
Anderson said they were happy to be entrusted with the future events and will certainly be good hosts.
The federation proved its ability to host and stage major events as witnessed on Saturday and Sunday when 340 swimmers from clubs in Gau­teng, Mpumalanga, North-West, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Limpopo competed in a full programme.
Some of the top performers of the event were Jones Brogan from Bens Swimming Club, Ryan Meiring (Rbot Swimming Club), Joshua Erasmus (H²O Swimming Club) and Lereko Makgatle (North West Swimming Club) who won gold medals in various categories.
Jones and Ryan won the boys u.10 and u.11 50 m breaststroke while Lereko triumphed the u.13 boys breaststroke event.
In the girls’ category Juliet van Thiel and Saskia Laubscher all from Tuks Swimming Club won their u.12 and u.14 breast stroke events respectively. Lee Jenna Marie from North West Swimming won the breast stroke for girls’ u.16.
Congratulating the swimmers Anderson said they were proud of all the participants and their achievements and wished them the best of luck in their next championships.
While Anderson praised the stakeholders who joined forces with the federation in organising the event he slammed Polokwane Municipality for their alleged inability to clean the swimming pool. “We had a successful gala and the facility was conducive to host much bigger events. However, the water clarity was a very big problem, the pool staff tried their very best but to no avail. Although the quality of the water did improve over the three days of the event it did not live up to the standard this event needed. The problem is the municipality is putting a plaster on a gunshot wound, the person in charge waited too long to fix the problem because they do not listen to the expert that has been employed by the municipality and the staff have to pick up the pieces at try and make it work,” added Anderson.

Story and photos: Herbert Rachuene
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For full results:
level 2 – final results – polowane (1)