A heart full of emotions and a stomach full of butterflies! This probably describes best the way everyone present at the DI Annual Aquatic 2022 must have felt. 

On a lovely bright afternoon as winter slowly sets in, the DI pool looked majestic – beautifully decorated with blue and white balloons. 

The seats were all full by 2:30 pm for the 3:00 pm start, showing how enthusiastically the members were looking forward to the start of the competition.  

The afternoon started on slightly sombre note with a minute’s silence in remembrance of friends we had lost to the pandemic in the last two years. A special remembrance was made for Puneet Sabharwal, past Council member and the person responsible for reviving swimming at DI, whom we lost this year.

The races started with a bang as the ‘big boys’ of the pool – the mens’category- started their 4 lengths freestyle race at a blistering pace, an extremely close finish separated the winner from the runner-up. This race set the pace for the rest of evening with close finishes and new records being set. Each race was extremely exciting with the audience cheering loudly and encouraging the swimmers.  

The surpise pack of the afternoon were the ‘munchkins’, as described by our MC, our under 10 year old swimmers. Their races were probably the most competitive as they swam their hearts out and fought right till they touched the finish line!  Absolutely exciting to see how well they swam and it bodes well for the future of DI swimming. They are going to be shining soon for the club.  

It was also wonderful to see how a lot of our veterans turned out to swim both in the men’s and ladies categories.

A total of 45 events were held across different age categories and different strokes - Men’s, Under 15 boys and girls, under 12 boys and girls, under 10 boys and girls, under 8 boys and girls , veterans etc. 

The evening ended with some fun events like the Salvage and Tube races. The tube races were great fun with moments of laughter as some swimmers struggled to get into the tubes as they had put on weight in the last two years and some who got in but either fell off or were paddling in the wrong direction!

A note of thanks to the swimming section which made this event possible and carried it out so well. 

A big thank you to our MC Gary O’Brien who, with his wonderful commentary, kept the audience both entertained and informed as the events progressed.  A big thank  you to our the team of record keepers, our members Debjani Basak, Shaheen Faiyaz and Zaid Elias who made sure every little detail needed was properly recorded.  

Last but not least a big thank you to our President Jayajit Biswas and all our Council members with whose support the club carried out such a large event so successfully.