Cambodia Games aquatics tryouts draw huge field

A total of 188 swimmers from 102 clubs from as far north as the Ilocos provinces to down under as southern Mindanao will converge at the New Clark City starting on Thursday for the Official National Swim Tryouts for the 32nd Southeast Asian Games.

With the registry book bursting at the seams — 135 males and 53 females — the tryouts go down as the biggest and most inclusive in Philippine aquatics history, according to the members of the Stabilization Committee tasked to oversee aquatics in the country.

"We are inspired by the big turnout of aspirants for the national team to the Cambodia SEA Games with the numbers going beyond our expectations," said Valeriano "Bones" Floro, a member of the Stabilization Committee along with Philippine Olympic Committee legal head Atty. Wharton Chan and Bases Conversion and Development Authority senior vice president for Corporate Services Group Arrey Perez.

"The tryouts will be handled by experienced coaches and individuals who were part of the 2019 SEA Games, former and current World Aquatics licensed technical officials and members of previous qualifying events for national pool selection."

The officials will be supervised by World Aquatics technical director, Japan's Kazumi Eguchi, whose credentials include tours of duty at the London 2012 Olympics, Rome 2009 and Barcelona 2013 world championships, Jakarta 2018 Asian Games and numerous Asian and Asian age group championships, as well as with the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2021.

The tryouts run for four days until Sunday at the New Clark City Aquatics Center.

There will be 34 events in swimming on top of the qualifiers for the men and women water polo teams and individual 3-meter springboard and platform for diving.

The swimming events for men and women are the 50, 100, 200, 200, 800 and 1,500 meters for freestyle; 50, 100 and 200 meters butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke; and 200 and 400 individual medley.

Members of the relay teams will be selected from the list of qualified athletes.

Qualified athletes will undergo a four-week training program under the direct supervision of the Stabilization Committee.