"We Are Building Future Record Breaking Swimmers" - Chairperson FCT Aquatic Association

"We Are Building Future Record Breaking Swimmers" - Chairperson FCT Aquatic Association

By Niyi Busari

The Chairperson FCT Aquatic Association, Engineer Mrs Duru Nkonye on Saturday at the maiden edition of the Swim Nigeria Annual Swimming Championship in Abuja said the grassroots tournament is organized to catch future champions in swimming at their tender age, BSNSports.com.ng can report.

Duru while speaking during the championship added that the Association will pick the best swimmers discovered and retrain them to compete for FCT and Nigeria. According to her, the event which was organised by Swim Nigeria in conjunction with the FCT Aquatic Association shows there are good grassroots swimmers in Abuja who can break the existing world record in the nearest future.

"Right now, we think that this is the right time to develop swimming in FCT and Nigeria as a whole and the only way you could do that is when you get the grassroots swimmers, find out the best ones and eventually train them. So, today we are partnering with Swim Nigeria to ensure that we are able to get the best grassroots swimmers in FCT," she told BSN Sports.

"The best ones will be picked and retrain them to become FCT swimmers and represent Nigeria in the Olympics in future.

"The FCT Aquatic Association is working very hard to get the best to represent FCT at the Youth Games and the National Sports Festival.

"From this competition here today, it shows there are swimmers we can pick from here in Abuja that can perform and win medals at the national level. Some of them have very good body system which means when they are properly trained they can represent us and win medals.

"To get the best out of our own in Abuja, we decided to invite young swimmers from other states and as you can see there are foreigners here today. This is because you can only get the best when you compete with others."

Also speaking at the competition, Mr Jimmy Cello, founder of Swim Nigeria and Vice Chairman FCT Aquatic Association who is confident that the tournament which commence this year will continue to discover talents in swimming and optimistic that the event will help FCT and Nigeria to begin to make podium performance in national and international competitions.

"The competition is organised to get them while they're young, bring out the best and develop them into world champions.

"Having seen some talents here today, we are confident that FCT and Nigeria will soon start producing swimmers that can rule the world, as we still here to discover more record breaking swimmers and get them proper training.

He explained why foreigners were invited to compete with kids from FCT:

"We invited young foreign swimmers and different schools to come and participate because we want to use them to measure the strength of our young swimmers and see what next of action to take. That is the reason why we are encouraging the diplomat children to be here competing with our kids." He concluded.