Dolphins lower expectations for their novice swimmers
Without star swimmers Arnold Kisulo and Selina Katumba among others, Dolphins Swim Club will be under less pressure to improve on last year’s performance at this weekend’s Kenya Open Age Group and Relay Longcourse Championships.
Katumba (11 gold medals) and Arnold Kisulo (three gold) inspired Dolphins to a fifth place finish in Nairobi last February. The team arrived in the city yesterday where they will compete against East Africa’s most promising swimmers.
“We want to expose more of our swimmers to as many competitions as possible. We have a lot of new swimmers (picture inset) including those with only a year’s experience at this competition,” coach Tony Kasujja said.
Dolphins are only making their second appearance at the championship. Rivals Seals will not take part this time as they are preparing for next month’s Level 1&2 Championship in South Africa.
Uganda has no long course swimming pool, designed for competition, therefore local swimmers are largely short of the experience needed ahead of such championships.
However, Dolphins’ 24-man team had to make do by training in the luxurious 50m pool at the Speke Resort, Munyonyo, for the last three weekends.
“The exposure is most needed but mostly we want the team to be able to better their times, then we can think of medals, maybe next year,” Kasujja added.
