The Sports Authority of India (SAI) was in for a surprise when the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) promptly shared their detailed plan to resume aquatic activities as in when life returns to normalcy post the pandemic.
Since March 24, when the lockdown was first imposed in the country, training activities have been halted. However, last Sunday, SAI - in a bid to start phase-wise resumption of training activities - asked all sports federations under its watch to submit recommendations for the same.
SFI sent their recommendations within a day with detailed guidelines but with references to ‘Opening Up America Again’ and advisories issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It turns out, SFI had forwarded the guidelines set by the National Governing Body for the sport of swimming in the United States, USA Swimming. The SAI had to ask the swimming federation to tweak the recommendation for India.
The USA Swimming had released a document titled: ‘Facility re-opening, messaging and planning’ which details the ‘Facility Use Plan’, to be shared with local public health officials and facility operators.
The eight-page dossier has programming model layouts that promote social distancing alongside various plan building recommendations and guidelines to restart training activities.
And the reason why SFI choose to forward the document as-is is that the guidelines shared by USA swimming were ‘foolproof’ and that ‘they have proper expertise in this area’.
“The guidelines issued by USA Swimming are foolproof and, to start with, we can rely on that. They have proper expertise in this area so we have forwarded that to the SAI committee. Let them modify as per the central and state government guidelines for Covid-19,” said Virendra Nanavati, SFI’s executive director as quoted by the Indian Express.
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