Sentosa competition venues ready ahead of World Aquatics Championships

SINGAPORE: A 37m-tall metal tower stands a stone’s throw away from the white sands of Palawan Beach on Sentosa island. At its foot is a circular blue pool 17m in diameter and 6m in depth.

Next to the structure, a blue pontoon stretches from the shore out onto the water, as huge vessels sit in Singapore’s famed anchorage in the background.

Four days away from the World Aquatics Championships, the Sentosa competition venues for high diving and open water swimming are ready to welcome the world’s top athletes.

The Championships, which features the six sports of swimming, water polo, diving, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving, will be held from Jul 11 to Aug 3.

Singapore will send its largest contingent to the competition this year, with a total of 72 athletes across five disciplines.

FIRST TIME IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Mr Mark Chay, co-chairperson of the championships’ organising committee, noted on Monday (Jul 7) that the high diving tower is the first such structure to be built in Southeast Asia. 

Male competitors will dive from 27m, while their female counterparts will dive from 20m, he said.

Mr Marcus Ng, project director at Innovez Engineering that built the dive pool, said that while it looks like a regular pool from the outside, it is anything but.

For one, the 21-tonne steel pool is made of 108 panels held together by 6,400 bolts. When filling it up with water, the depth meant that “there’s a huge force that's pushing out on every panel”, said Mr Ng.

“So what we did was we monitored the panels down to the millimetre every day, and the expansion was exactly to our engineers’ design. So we're very happy with that,” he said.

Mr Ng noted that the request was for the temporary pool to be installed quickly, and also dismantled quickly afterward.

It took about a month for the pool to be installed, from its main structure to the blue PVC liner, said Mr Ng.

When CNA visited the venue in late June, the high diving tower had already been completed, with workers in the process of filling up the dive pool.

Speaking to CNA on the scaffold deck towering 6m above ground, Mr Harry Yap, the venue manager for the championships’ Sentosa events, said that all that was left to be done was “touch-up work”.

This includes anti-slip material to be laid on the dive platforms, completion of wheelchair ramps and putting up of panels on the scaffolding.

To get the venue to where it is, Mr Yap said that a professional engineer had to be engaged to work out structural elements and loading capacity based on specifications from World Aquatics.

“Once we got this design and drawing, we also had to go through government bodies to get these things passed in order to ensure the safety of these structures,” he added.

Construction of the venue started less than three months prior.

“One of the challenges was also the tight timeline to construct this place starting from the 14th April. So, big credit to the contractors to be able to keep to a very strict timeline,” said Mr Yap.

The filling of the dive pool was to ensure that there are no leaks and take preemptive measures should any issues arise, he added.

On competition day, there will be a team of medical and safety professionals on site, said Mr Yap.

“In the pool itself, we will have two to three scuba divers, who will act as a lifeguard. On the pool deck itself, there will also be paramedics available,” he said.

MONITORING WATER QUALITY

Ms Kenza Brouwer, assistant venue manager for the championships’ Sentosa events and course officer for open water swimming, said on Monday that much work has gone into preparations for the event.

Her team will be marking the course in the water on Tuesday, for the races which range in distance from 3km to 10km.

“We've been closely monitoring the water conditions, including water quality tests for bacteria, and water temperature,” she said.

Ms Brouwer added that measures are being taken to ensure that athletes are swimming in a safe environment.

“Of course, it's open water swimming. There's only so much we can control. But everything that we can do to best ensure the athlete's safety, will be taken,” she said.

Mr Chay called the Sentosa venues “fantastic”.

One challenge of organising the “massive event” is the coordination required by different stakeholders, he said.

“We’re very fortunate to have great coordination with a lot of agencies in Singapore. The different government agencies have been extremely helpful across the different areas that we need to think about,” said Mr Chay.

He added that the competition venues and the running of the events were planned such that they were smooth and athlete-centric.

The organising committee decided to cluster the events in three venues — Sentosa, the OCBC Aquatic Centre and the World Aquatics Championships Arena — to provide a great experience to both athletes and spectators alike, said Mr Chay.