Mireia Belmonte & Mates Pray For Pain In Spain To End As Swim Fed Seeks To Overturn Pool Closures

Mireia BELMONTE GARCIA of Spain on her way out of the pool after competing in the women's 400m Individual Medley (IM) Heats during the 17th European Short Course Swimming Championships held at the Jyske Bank BOXEN in Herning, Denmark, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. (Photo by Patrick B. Kraemer / MAGICPBK)

Mireia Belmonte - Photo Courtesy: Patrick B. Kraemer ©

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Mireia Belmonte, Olympic 200m butterfly champion, open-water ace Paula Ruiz and World junior champion Alba Vasquez, are among top swimmers in Spain who had their hopes of a return to full training crushed by a Spanish Ministry of Health order last weekend that left swimming and swimming pools off the list of sports included in a”phase 1 COVID-19 [lockdown] de-escalation” plan.

The Spanish Swimming Federation responded on Monday with a request to the Government to think again and mirror the move seen in Denmark yesterday, when 41 “approved” elite swimmers were granted permission to return to training in controlled conditions after intervention from the Danish Swimming Union.

Last Thursday, the Danish Government left swimmers in the fourth wave of a phased plan to reboot sport. It would have been August before Olympic teamsters could get back into home waters. The federation put the case for allowing elite swimmers back now in controlled conditions, including heightened hygiene standards, physical distancing, restrictions on numbers allowed into pools at any one time and specific cleaning practices that go beyond the standard.

In Spain, the CAR training group at Sant Cugat had planned to open on Monday for Olympic team members or those with a strong shot at making the cut at rescheduled trials.

In preparation for a re-opening, all swimmers of that standard in Barcelona and Madrid had taken COVID-19 tests and tested negative. In addition, measures such as only one swimmer per lane had been planned, with a minimum 2.5m distance possible between swimmers at all times, in chlorinated or treated water and out of it.

The coach at Sant Cugat, Jordi Jou, with Jessica Vall, Joan Lluis Pons, Lidón Muñoz and Africa Zamorano among his charges, noted that in club situations distancing would be “more difficult because we interact with swimmers, age groupers and other members.”

Mireia Belmonte, World short-course record holder over 800m freestyle, 200m butterfly and 400m medley, is guided by Spain’s head coach Fred Vergnoux, who recently took part in a podcast with Ireland’s performance director Jon Rudd and Walter Bolognani, Italy’s head junior coach and co-founder of Nuoto.com, covering the challenges of lockdown and the journey out of it.

Until last week, pool closures had been matched in Spain by a ban on open water swimming. That has now been lifted but Paula Ruiz, one of two Spanish open water swimmers to have made the cut for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games now to be held from July 23, 2021, joined her federation’s call to get elite athletes back in the pool, too.

Alba Vazquez; Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepblue Media

Ruiz trains at the Malaga Performance Centre alongside Alba Vazquez, who won a thrilling 400IM at the World Junior Championships in world-junior-record time of 4:38.53 last August. Ruiz told Spanish media:

“The pool thing is a mess. I took the Covid-19 test and paid whatever it is to train and pick it up again. In Andalusia there are only five or six [elite, funded high-performance swimmers]. Let them concentrate on us … with a coach. I think I speak for all the swimmers. They’re going to end up opening the bars and terraces before the pools.”

One of the three worst-hit nations of Europe, with Britain and Italy, Spain, the first European country to close the pools due to coronavirus pandemic, has the second highest rate of infections outside the United States (1.4m), at 268,143, according to official global statistics that have been subject to questions over how counts are gathered, what they measure and how reliable they are.

The official statistics record 26,744 deaths in Spain as of today, at a time when the curve of infections is flattening and the country is easing lockdown orders.

The Spanish federation, the RFEN, has asked the country’s Ministry of Health to rethink the decision and allow swimming to join the group of phase 1 sports allowed to return “with the prevention and hygiene measures required of the other sports facilities”.

The federation’s argument was supported by a report from Spain’s Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) that concludes: “SARS-CoV-2 infection by contact with standard [treated] pool waters is highly unlikely”. The report also noted that “the residual concentration of the disinfection agent present in the water should be sufficient for the inactivation of the virus”, according to the CE Noticias Financieras news service.

Mireia Belmonte. Photo Courtesy: Jack Gruber-USA TODAY Sports

RFEN president Fernando Carpena went further than the Olympic elite such as Mireia Belmonte, however, saying:

“We do not ask for privileged status, just to be granted the same consideration as other outdoor sports. If that order is not changed, swimming is excluded as a physical activity for the hundreds of thousands of Spaniards who practice it.”

Reports in Spain note that many clubs have lost membership fees and dipped into the red during lockdown. They now find themselves excluded from ease-down measures at their pools even though they are allowed to open covered gyms and tennis courts under controlled conditions.

Angel Bernet, president of CN Sant Andreu, National Club League champions, told CENF that he thought the issue was not just about the challenges faced by Mireia Belmonte and other Olympic elites. He said that it would be wrong just to allow the elite back in and noted that he would not be able to open overnight even when restrictions are lifted because of the cleaning and heating process required:

“We can’t open the pools and I think it would be wrong for us to open up for elite swimmers if we can’t open for other members. But [even when allowed to reopen] we can’t do it from a Saturday to a Monday. We need at least 15 days for legionella treatment and a week to heat the water.”

Britain and England’s Jack Burnell – Photo Courtesy: Swimming Australia

Adding weight to the argument for controlled pool openings, Spain, Mireia Belmonte and her teammates and their coaches look to Germany and The Netherlands as examples of countries that have started to open up water space this week. Sweden, meanwhile, has never closed its pools, while pools in Britain and France remain shut.

England’s Open-Water Swimmers May be Back In Water Tomorrow

England’s open-water swimmers, meanwhile, are hopeful that they will be allowed back into seas, lakes and rivers soon under government guidelines published yesterday that allow sportsmen and women to train with a person from outside their household provided they keep two metres apart.

If they have interpreted the new rules correctly, against a backdrop of confusion and debate about the precise advice from the UK Government, open water swimmers could take the plunge as early as tomorrow.

Swim England, however, is advising that “only competent and experienced open-water swimmers use this form of exercise” and only “whilst adhering to social distancing guidelines” as “the majority of locations will not have lifeguards”.

A Swim England spokesman told The Times that it was working with British Triathlon and the Royal Life Saving Society to prepare guidelines, which it said would be “published shortly”.

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