Thrissur: The State Schools aquatics championship, which concluded here on Thursday, produced as many as 18 records. The four-day event also created a dubious ‘record'; and that came outside the pool.

It was set by the organisers, who seemed ill-equipped to perform one of the vital tasks while conducting an event like this: to make note of meet records.

According to the results announced on the opening day, there was only one meet record. Two days later it turned out the officials had overlooked four new records on day one.

It was only after one of the swimmers informed a newspaper reporter that she had set a record, the facts finally came out of the record books. Now, the officials were forced to recheck the results of events held two days earlier, and suddenly it started to rain records.

Though the records were not announced in time, they would of course be there at least for a year in their creators' names, but the point is, these kids missed out on their moments of glory.

And their achievements were not announced over the public address system.

So how did this lapse occur? Because there simply was no manual checking of the records at the end of an event, leaving everything to the computer.


The Hindu