KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia Swimming (MS) diving technical director Bryan Nickson Lomas is kicking off a few initiatives to help expand the talent pool of divers to address the lack of quality national backups in the sport.
According to the former diver, the country is facing a shortage of athletes at the grassroots level which then causes the quality of the backup squad to dip.
He added that the gap of standard between the backup squad and the seniors needs to be closed so Malaysia can produce athletes that can compete at the Olympic level.
“One of the plans to address this is to engage with states whose diving programmes have not been active and convince them to restart the programmes.
“We also need to expand the talent pool, especially in the female department as right now we have 14 divers in the backup squad and only three of them are female athletes.
“We have engaged with the state’s Sports Council and made visits to a few states to see if they have adequate diving facilities,” said Bryan, who represented Malaysia at three Olympic Games.
A shortage of coaches at every level also contributes to the problem of the dearth of talent to supply to the national backup squad.
Bryan said there is interest in having state diving programmes but they have a hard time finding suitable coaches.
The 2004 10m platform junior world champion highlighted that seven to eight states currently maintain active diving programmes.
However, these states also continue to face challenges as they struggle to nurture sufficient talent due to a shortage of coaches.
“Diving is a sport where the athlete-to-coach ratio needs to be low, but we understand sometimes there is a budget issue.
“But to fix the shortage of coaches, MS will organise a Level 1 coaching clinic next month, after a few years of not having one.
“We can place these coaches in centralised diving centres that we have identified. This can help in the development of this sport,” said Bryan who was appointed as MS diving technical director in September. – December 7, 2023