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Letter: Burnaby artistic swimmers left out in the cold

Dedicated athletes were left without proper training facilities when C.G. Brown Pool closed, this writer says.
artistic_synchronized_swimming
Synchronized swimmers in practice. A Burnaby parent says the city left competitive artistic swimmers out in the cold — literally — when it closed C.G. Brown Pool.

Editor:

I am writing to express my disappointment and frustration with the complete lack of proper planning for the closure of C.G. Brown.

My daughter is a national-stream artistic swimming athlete on the Burnaby Caprice team. With the closure of their main pool, the team has lost critical pool time to train. These are dedicated athletes that put in countless hours to train at the national level. Additionally, the club has younger provincial-stream swimmers, as well as adapted athletes, masters and recreational swimmers.

There was no thought or plan put forward to counter the closure.

Additionally, the club was training at SFU, which is also closed for renovations. Our athletes now swim outside in the winter, in snow and rain to train.

Even though the pool temperature is considered adequate, I am certain mostly everyone would admit swimming outside without adequate coverage of the pool is simply is deficient and ridiculous.

It is heartbreaking to see the dedication our athletes have to the sport, and are given so little. On Saturdays the athletes swim for four hours outside and then again two hours on Thursday evenings.

I am positive that if the same thing happened to kids playing hockey, plans would have been made ahead of time to ensure they could keep on playing in a suitable environment.

Nicole Sauder