Archive for January 21st, 2013
Swimmers learn from Olympians
(CIASA): Splash, Dash and Dine 2013 has been heralded a success by its organizers, the Cayman Islands Amateurs Swimming Association (CIASA). Olympic swimmers Liam Tancock (Great Britain), Caitlin McClatchey (Great Britain) and Conor Dwyer (USA) were in Grand Cayman, January 10-13 putting on clinics, leading sea swims and taking part in a fund raising brunch. CIASA is a volunteer, not for profit association dedicated to furthering the interests of all aquatic sports in the Cayman Islands. Funds raised are used for further educational and technical training of officials, coaches and senior/elite swimmers; for the Junior Cayman Islands CARIFTA Swimming Team; for the popular Sea Swim Series and for the development of the sport of swimming throughout the Cayman Islands.
The Splash: the clinics were capped to 30 swimmers per session to ensure that those participating had a quality experience where they were able to listen and learn. The 12& over swimmers attended on Thursday 10th and were hosted at the Camana Bay Aquatic Club (CBAC) pool; while the Under 12 swimmers attended on Friday 11th at the Lions Aquatic Center (LAC).
At each session the Olympians gave attendees a motivational speech followed by a Q&A and opportunity to see, touch and hold the Olympians medals. Then they all got in to the pool and took part in skills sessions. One of the stand out moments was watching Liam Tancock, 50m World Record Holder, demonstrate his backstroke start and then seeing Cayman’s young swimmers immediately work on changing their own starts.
The Dash: the Care Pharmacy sea swims took place just off world famous Seven Mile Beach and saw Liam Tancock taking part in his first ever open water swim. Spoiled by the experience he admitted he might not do another one until he is back in Cayman.
To encourage swimmers of all ages and abilities to take part in the sea swims, there were two distances, a 200m and a 400m swim. Tancock won the 200m distance in a time of 02:15; while Dwyer – having heard of local swimmer Alex McCallum’s win over Olympic Gold Medal 10K winner Oussama Mellouli in the Pirates Week 5K – went out fast over the first 50m and then held his lead to the Finish Line, crossing in a time of 04:20. McCallum came in second and Caitlin McClatchey crossed the line in third. Veteran sea swim swimmer HE Duncan Taylor also swam and was delighted to be a part of this historic sea swim.
The starving swimmers were fed post-race with healthy Subway sandwiches donated by CIASA Sponsor Subway and were also treated to ice cream donated by Island Opportunities. Participants in the sea swims also had the opportunity to have their photos taken on the beach with the visiting Olympians.
And Dine: the Brunch took place at the Marriott Grand Cayman Beach Resort and attendees took part in a Silent and LIVE Auction, a raffle and a great brunch. CIASA Directors Brenda McGrath and Dr. Sook Yin; Community Volunteer Extraordinaire Sara Mackay and all members of the Fund Raising Committee organized a fantastic event; Master of Ceremonies Ian Armiger kept the programme moving along in a timely manner; and Auctioneer Jay Earhart, appropriately dressed in a tuxedo…with swim shorts…took charge of the Live Auction.
The highest item to go in the LIVE auction was an Olympic comforter/bedspread from London 2012 which was signed by the Cayman Islands Olympic Team and then the three visiting Olympians signed it as well and which fetched the handsome price of CI$1,050.00.
There were a number of other great items in both the Silent and LIVE auctions including signed Olympic attire; swim caps signed by US and UK swimmers; an autographed Olympic Experiences Book; gift certificates for local restaurants, watersports activities and stores and Pan Am Games memorabilia autographed by Shaune and Brett Fraser.
The Brunch was attended by Cayman’s swimming community and was attended by representatives of swimming’s major sponsors: CIG’s Duncan Taylor and Minister of Sports, Mark Scotland and Maples and Calder Partner Mark Matthews. And at the end of the four days there were winners all around: CIASA raised over CI$10K; the Cayman Islands has three new Olympic Fans and the Cayman Swimming Family enjoyed four days of Olympic storytelling, swimming tips and techniques, camaraderie and family.
Don’t follow leaders who make detours
Being rich and successful is not by itself a prerequisite for elected office, yet we hear ourselves crying aloud the wishes of some that those who have made money, retired from work and can now support the comforts and habits they have become accustomed to should now take over political leadership of our country because they have no need of our money.
I wish I could say the same about CUC, Fosters, my bank and other financial institutions, but when was need ever the cause of millionaires wanting to become billionaires and billionaires working even harder to remain billionaires.
Greed is never the reason members of civil society and holders of public office betrayed your trust; it was want, and mostly ‘I want to be like them’ or simply ‘I want to be better than them’. From the day mankind began stratifying society and stratification became the method of preserving the status quo or established order or hierarchy, it became not just an individual’s choice to want always more, it became our nature.
Of course, we may say that our civil society is full of greed (call it ambition, then) but, unlike our government, is free of corruption. However, discrimination in itself is corruption and there is still plenty of that in our work environment, even if what we call it is just ‘them not wanting us to have what they got’. The long struggle to establish a law to protect the wealth which Caymanians should be entitled to collectively as a nation in the form of the Legal Practitioners Law is one case in point of attempts by expat lawyers to preserve the perverted differences in entitlements between Caymanians and some expats.
As Caymanians we have always approached the issue of economic differences as if it was something ordained by God and therefore no one should question the realities of the social and cultural divisions this system of division of our nation’s wealth has created. It is as if we accepted from the outset that we had no wealth to start with and all that was accumulated over the years should go to expat knowledge workers and a few chosen Caymanians elected by them to partake in their private gathering of wealth, while little or nothing is paid towards the national entity which made the financial service industry a well sought after asset.
The Caymanian court of arms(flag) and our well established property laws govern and protects, with the blessing of the United Kingdom, foreign commercial entities from direct taxation and this allows many of them to make billions of dollars in untaxed profits. Our commercial value is therefore connected to the needs of international capitalism for neutral non-tax jurisdictions. But if this asset was not protected in a way that its benefits had a greater trickledown effect to all of us, then those now leaving the expat controlled world to manage our government cannot be entrusted to manage our government so that we as Caymanians will finally come first.
If we were talking oil, gold or silver, then anyone would have noted from the outset that the Cayman Islands has an economic value by virtue of its being a unique national entity, and would have wanted a greater share of the profits made by knowledge- workers employed by our on-shore cooperation, but because most of us cannot comprehend the concept of invisible capital or invisible gold we continue to sell off our entitlements for little or nothing.
Therefore, Caymanians, when asking what went wrong and what is wrong with our country and what kind of leadership we now need in order to deal with these challenges, we should not forget that: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voices of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” (Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia)
I am very happy we now have so many educated Caymanians entering politics but I would have been much pleased if even one among them was an economist. And let us not forget that, although education or specialization in law and accountancy may be real qualities when it comes to accounting for someone else’s money, additional qualifications and experiences are necessary when the goal of the organization is human as well as material.
Caymanians, we have a long way forward and we must continue to think future rather than follow leaders who make detours. Man cannot live from bread alone and, regardless of what each of our contributions may be to our society, we each have the same share when it comes to the nation and the power of establishing government. Our new leaders may not need to know personally the plight of the poor, the sick or the unemployed and unemployable but a long career of rubbing shoulders only with the rich and powerful does not make anyone incorruptible or capable of providing the caring leadership we need in these serious times.