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Special Olympics Airdrie athletes make a splash at annual swim meet

Home-pool advantage proved an asset for Airdrie's athletes, as the vast majority received at least one ribbon, and every local swimmer achieved at least one personal best. 
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Seventeen Special Olympics Airdrie swimmers competed at the club's annual swim meet at Genesis Place on March 25.

Special Olympics Airdrie (SOA) athletes swam lengths, achieved personal bests, and earned plenty of ribbons at the club's annual swim meet at Genesis Place Recreation Centre on March 25.

According to SOA swimming's head coach Tammy Hnatiuk, this year's swim meet was one of the club's largest to date, with nearly 90 registered athletes. 

“We were really pleased,” she said. “I think it was our biggest meet yet. We did have 89 swimmers registered and I think in the end, it was around 85 [who participated], but that’s still our biggest turnout so far. We had quite a range of clubs that came. Including the Airdrie club, there were actually 10 different groups there.”

Seventeen swimmers were from Airdrie, which was also a record turnout for SOA, Hnatiuk added. Among those, four were participating in their first official competition.

Apart from the 17 local athletes Hnatiuk said other competitors came to Airdrie from as far south as Lethbridge and as far north as Grande Prairie. Athletes from Olds, Brooks, Red Deer, and then two separate Special Olympics clubs from Calgary also came to compete. 

Though the bulk of participants were from Alberta, Hnatiuk noted a few swimmers came from outside the province's borders, notably one from Northwest Territories and a few from clubs in Saskatchewan. 

“Special Olympics’ World Games are coming up, I think in September in Berlin,” she said. “Because of that, we even had a swimmer from the Northwest Territories that came and a couple from Saskatchewan as well.”

This year's SOA swim meet was the first one since early March 2020, just a few weeks before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought group sporting events to a halt. 

Now in its seventh year, the annual SOA swim meet is hosted at Genesis Place, but for the first five years, Hnatiuk said it was hosted in either Didsbury or Olds, due to the difficulty of booking pool time in Airdrie. 

“Due to pool space, the first year, we did it in Didsbury and then in Olds for a couple of years,” she said. “Genesis Place allowed us a small window, so we were able to get it in during a five-hour window there. The pool booking has definitely been a challenge.”

A highlight of the competition are the ribbons up for grabs, which Hnatiuk said always motivates the swimmers to do their best. 

She said this year, home pool advantage proved an asset, as the vast majority of the SOA athletes competing received at least one ribbon, and every local swimmer achieved at least one personal best. 

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