Indian national swimming coach,Pradeep Kumar rues the fact that Indian swimmers had to break their training schedule abroad in order to attend the selection trials for the Commonwealth Games in Jaipur held in August. However,the coach was confident that in spite of traveling to-and-fro from their training bases abroad to Jaipur and back,the swimmers would be able to give their best at the Commonwealth Games. Rehan Poncha was training in Los Angeles while Aaron D'Souza was in the United States too. Veerdhawal Khade and Sandeep Sejwal were based in Europe. "When these swimmers are abroad,they have a coach. Each coach has a different schedule and programme and it becomes difficult for a swimmer to adapt to a new schedule. Over the last few months there has been a lot of confusion and we have had less control over training schedules than we would have wanted to have had," Kumar told The Indian Express. At the Commonwealth Games,the Indian swimmers will be up against world-class squads from Australia,South Africa,Canada and Wales. "It is going to be tough. But I think one of the male swimmers would have an outside chance of bagging a medal. Over the past four years,the men's contingent have raised the bar though there is some way to go before were reach finals of major events, Kumar added. The Indian swimming contingent is currently practicing at the Talkatora stadium,where race-specific strategies are being fine tuned. However,Kumar is rather realistic about what the swimmers are trying to achieve at the Commonwealth Games. We are hoping that this will be a good build-up to the Asian Games and will also help us gain valuable exposure with the Olympic Games qualifying meets just six months away, the India coach added. However,if Kumar's expectations have fallen it has something to do with the absence of monitoring devices,including heart-rate monitor and the lactic-acid monitor both key devices to detect the optimum performance level of an athlete. Now,I have borrowed a heart-rate monitor and a lactic-acid monitor from another coach. But these devices have not been provided by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) at Pune and in New Delhi where we have been training since last week, Kumar added.
