Swimming Canada Thursday released data on the reopening process for its High Performance Centres, showing nearly 3,000 individual pool training sessions since reopening.
The information, which Swimming Canada promises is the first of several releases, seeks to quantify the effort to reopen pools after the COVID-19 pandemic caused months-long closures, some lasting as long as 122 days, from mid-March.
Canada’s three High Performance Centres – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – have housed 46 Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls. (The HPC in Victoria closed in August; it was planned to be phased out after the Tokyo Olympics in the summer.) Athletes have taken part in 356 training sessions in the pool for the total of 2,991 individual sessions, in addition to 1,074 individual dryland sessions. In that time, the High Performance Centres have returned zero positive COVID-19 tests.
“We recognize that, while you cannot ever eliminate risk to zero, we can work on maintaining our risk mitigation protocols within our centres,” John Atkinson, the High Performance Director and National Coach, said in a press release. “This shows other university and municipality pools that the proper plans and protocols should allow for the sport to return in their facilities as well.”
Returning to the High Performance Centres has been at the forefront of Canada’s return to sport. The nation has convened a National Return to Sport Taskforce, led by the Own the Podium initiative and engaging sports medicine and public health experts on the national and provincial levels. Swimming Canada has its own work group to develop a sport-specific, return-to-swim plan within the larger national effort.
“The return to the centres has seen a controlled environment being created in order to mitigate risk from a very responsible group of athletes, coaches and expert staff,” Atkinson said. “Even though Canada may be seeing a second wave of the pandemic, the Swimming Canada HPCs have shown how the risk mitigating plans that are in place are working and the measures undertaken continue to work. We have made other national sport groups aware of this through the National Return to Sport Taskforce, and now we are sharing the information so it can be shown to all in federal and provincial government, public health departments, municipal councils, pool operators and universities.”
Swimming Canada plans to release additional data “in the coming days,” as part of the latest update to its Return to Swimming Resource Document.