Finswimmers hahakot ng medalya sa SEAG

ANG Finswimming ay isa sa 40 sports na nakalendaryo sa parating na Vietnam Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) at limang promising athlete ang ipaparada kapag nag-umpisa na ang kumpetisyon sa Mayo 21 to 22 sa Aquatic Sports Palace sa loob ng National Sports Complex sa Hanoi.

Ang magkapatid na Rafaella Romina at Raissa Regatta Gavino, Akiva Jose Carini,Marjorie Denise Manguilat at Sam Andrei Doragos ang bumobuo sa team at inaasahang magbibigay ng karangalan sa bansa, na nagbulsa ng gold medal sa women’s 50m surface (Daniela Faith Torres) at bronze medal sa men’s 4x100m ( Franz Garett Baaco, Leonard Angelo Sabellana, Matthew Earl Rodriguez at Mike Godoy) sa 2011 SEAG sa Indonesia.

“We expect them to give their best and really try to compete with our neighboring finswimmers. We feel that with our previous background (swimming), it can translate into some competitiveness in finswimming,” Wika ni head coach Archimedes “Archie” Lim.

“Informal tryouts were done by invitation to swimmers who we feel can translate their swimming skills into finswimming. Since finswimming required a lot of time to master the skill itself, more so to become competitive, we had to practically choose based on our assessment on who can likely perform well. This supposedly gave us more time to prepare our athletes,” Paliwanag ng 43-year old Lim, Na nag co-coach simula noong 1999. Dati na siyang national swimming coach bago lumipat sa finswimming 2020.

Raissa Regatta Gavino, na senior sa University of New Mexico, ay sumabak sa 2015 SEAG at gold winner sa 2016 SEA Age- Group Swimming Championship, kung saan nasungkit ni Carino ang bronze medal.Habang si Rafaella Romina ay UAAP Rookie of the Year, Doragos ay lumahok sa 2019 SEAG Age-Group Swimming Championship at Manguiat naglaro sa UAAP 2019.

Napagalaman ni Lim na maliban sa pagiging host country, ang Vietnam ay powerhouse sa finswimming.