Young swimmers can learn from Atkinson – Lamey

Amateur Swimming Association of Jamaica (ASAJ) president, Handel Lamey, wants upcoming swimmers to gain maximum lessons from the global swim star Alia Atkinson before she retires.

“She has a lot of experience in international events. It’s just for her to be able to share with our younger swimmers who are coming up, and she was able to do that in Windsor, Canada, recently. We had a young team with her,” he said.

Lamey continued that the budding athletes were able to learn and see competition at that level.

According to Lamey, Atkinson should be given plaudits while she is still representing the country.

“She has tremendous motivation and focus, and I think that is something that augers well for her, and also for the swimmers that are coming up, we are hoping they can learn from her to really emulate her,” he pointed out.

Atkinson recently won three medals at the Short Course (SC) World Championships and broke the 50m breaststroke SC world-record, despite failing to pick up her long-sought Olympic medal.

“After the Olympics, that was really disappointing for her. I know that she was expecting to do very well there because she was coming off a period that she equalled the world record at the time, and then she broke it, so she was expecting big things, and it just didn’t work that way,” Lamey underlined