The club’s secretary general, Inviolata Itatiro, said the young swimmer won four medals at the event, which attracted more than 70 swimmers.
She said Tumiotto, who competed in the U10 category, won two gold medals in 400 meters freestyle and 100 meters butterfly races, one silver medal in 50 meters freestyle and one bronze in 100 meters freestyle.
Itatiro said the country was represented by 13 swimmers, namely Lydia Janik, Deeptti Venugopal, Maia Tumiotto, Ursula Khimji, Anna-Clara Azzoni, Maya Somaiya and Niki Somaiya.
Others are Smriti Gokarn, Anjani Taylor, Kayla Temba, Celina Itatiro, Peter Itatiro and Marin de Villard.She said she is confident that the country has a great future in swimming.
“ We are very happy with the performance shown by our swimmers, many of them have improved their personal best time. Their confidence and focus has also improved a lot, the improvement shown this year in Dubai is giving us confidence that we have a future in swimming,” she said.
She also disclosed that competing in the Hamilton Aquatic event aimed at giving Dar es Salaam Swimming Club’s members international exposure, as well as assessing their competence on international standard pools.
“ We went to Dubai with the aim of giving our swimmers opportunity to compete with other international swimmers on international standard pools,” she said.
The official also disclosed that her team will take part in a competition slated to take place in South Africa in March next year.
She said the club will conduct trials in February next year to select best swimmers for the South Africa event.
Meanwhile, the club’s coach, Mike Livingstone, said none of Tanzania’s swimmers can win a medal in the next year’s Rio Olympics.
He said it takes ten years and 1000 hours to produce a swimmer that can compete for medals in the Olympics.
Livingstone, who accompanied the Dar es Salaam Swimming Club’s youngsters to Dubai, said the time for producing Olympics’ gold medal winner has stages namely learning swimming, stroke development, stroke improvement, training to compete and training to win.
“To be honest, Tanzania does not have a swimmer that can win gold medal in the Olympics. The country has many good swimmers including Sonia Tumiotto, who is currently studying at St Felix in the UK,” he said.
“She is good but not for the 2016 Rio Olympics. With good preparations and intensive training, she can be ready for the junior Olympics and the 2020 Olympics in Japan,” he said.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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