Since its opening two years ago, the state of the art Singapore OCBC Aquatics centre has only been accessible to Singapore’s national qualifiers and worlds elite athletes. This weekend the Tanglin Trust Merlion Sprint Festival opened the doors of this facility to over 500 swimmers from international schools from throughout Singapore.
Singapore’s current competition calendar is extremely limited with very few opportunities for swimmers to compete in a prelim-final event, with even fewer opportunities to do this in a national qualifying environment. For the majority of swimmers on Saturday, this was their first ever finals experience. Combine this with the Singapore national teams participation and the countries lead officials, the meet not only elevated itself to a higher standard but became a bridging event between the world class and next generation of swimmers, which was almost as valuable an experience as the event itself.
The events success has led to a partnership with the Aquatics Centre through to 2017.
Swimming news courtesy of David Hailey.