Taff Ely Turtles Swimming Club for People with Disabilities
Taff Ely Turtles Swimming Club for People with Disabilities
AN INTRODUCTION TO SWIMMING GALAS Some Disabled swimmers enjoy and benefit from the stimulus of competition, and so they should be encouraged to take part in Galas. However, swimmers should not be bullied or coerced into taking part if they do not want to, since as well as simply not wishing to take part, they may also have other medical reason for not being able to take part.
There are a number of different ways in which races could be organised: -
It could be conventional style of race, where everyone starts at the same time and the first past the finishing post is the winner, which is fine for people who are deaf or blind since they are in all other respects perfectly fit. On the other hand there is no way some disabled persons could possibly win, and so probably even the most determined would eventually feel so demoralised that they could give up swimming altogether, and these are the very people we need to encourage. So what are the alternatives?
We could have races for people with a particular type to disability, but in our opinion, this is not really viable for a number of reasons: -
(a) Fortunately, there are not enough people with one disability to make it practical on a club level, and even on a National level it restricts competition.
(b) Unfortunately the chances are that if a person has a disability they probably will have more than one and so it is difficult to categorise people.
(c) Similarly, people may be more or less able, depending on at what stage of the illness they are, and so this too could give an unfair advantage.
The method usually considered fairest to everyone is some form of ‘timed handicapped system’. This may be either, the swimmers take part in a race covering a specified time band, or the method used by the Halliwick Association of Swimming Therapy. Here, the swimmers are timed regularly before the race and the best of these times submitted to the Race Timing Co-ordinator (RTC). The RTC then arranges the race so that the slowest swimmer goes at “GO” and the others then follow at relevant intervals arrived at by deduction their ‘entered times’ from that of the slowest swimmer. This means that all the swimmers should reach the finish at the same time, but due to the excitement of the race and the adrenaline flowing, the swimmers try their best and
real competition occurs.
