From Olympic pool to landfill
- Written by Dariana Hernández Fernández / Student of journalism
- Published in Sports
- Hits: 2348
What today is a landfill, five years ago was a place where swimming and water polo were practiced massively in Gibara.
At the beginning, the pool was a quadrilateral of stakes embedded in the sea, where the Init is located today. The neighbors built it with voluntary labor.
Outstanding athletes were trained there, who positioned Gibara as the municipality with the most contributions to the national teams and with results of the highest level: Rafael Leyva, the first to be national and Central American champion for several consecutive years in two styles (butterfly and free ); Oscar Periche Cardet, goalkeeper of the national Water Polo team for more than 20 years and participant in four Olympics; Juan José Soler González, senior national runner-up for several years, among others. This is how this property acquired historical and sentimental value.
Later, it was rebuilt from masonry, at the call of the then first Party secretary in the territory, Miguel Escalona. People say that he led by example: tireless on site, like any worker.
"Many were the achievements of the Gibara athletes, that is why we say that the pool was earned and built by the town with their own hands," said Eduardo Rojas Sarmiento, national children's champion, several times national runner-up, Pan-American youth champion and world youth runner-up.
Anti-Pool Hurricanes
The Waldimiro Arcos Riera Olympic pool was completed in 1979. Contradictorily, the sporting results that were expected were not obtained. The municipality was going through a critical moment with drinking water. The pool was empty for too long and the athletes were unable to train.
In 2008, Hurricane Ike destroyed it. Thanks to the support of Unicef and the UN, it was repaired with special materials and features, so that it could be used with salt water, pumped directly from the sea. It even worked with lighting at night and fresh and salt water pumps.
Nine years later, Irma turned the longing for an Olympic swimming pool into a macro-dump, which affects the environment and the neighbors.
In this way, the training of athletes, the rehabilitation of people with disabilities and other conditions, recreation and the swimming lessons to children are limited.
Longing for the pool
According to Andrés Ricardo Rivas, president of the Municipal Assembly, the facility passed into the hands of Emprestur, which was in charge of its renovation from now on.
Like the one in Gibara, the desolate panorama of other swimming pools in the country affects the development of swimming, since it leads to a reduction in the number of athletes and coaches.
It is worrying to witness how the potential of what one day ranked the Villa Blanca on the sports map is wasted.
