Officials mess up lap count, swimmers forced to repeat 1500m event

The 1500m freestyle was the opening event of the Championships and the officials lost count of laps because two papers were stuck together.

Representative image: In the 50m pool, the swimmers had to do 30 laps.

It is the longest event in the 67th Kerala State senior championships here but a bunch of swimmers were forced to do the 1500m freestyle twice on Saturday as the officials could not keep a proper lap count.

The 1500m, where swimmers have to do 30 laps in the 50m pool, was the opening event of the championships and it looks like the officials had not settled down by then.

“We had left out a lap while counting. After every lap is completed, we turn the number on the lap counter, but there was a mistake during one such process. Two papers were stuck together so one lap went missing,” R. Sathikumari, the secretary of the Kerala Aquatics Association, told

Sportstar here.

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“So there was a huge difference in the times, the timings did not tally. We had just started the championship with that event, it was a time trial for the first group of 1500m swimmers, so everything was not in order.”

The timings must have been some sort of record, probably even a national record, before the officials realised their mistake.

“We did not announce the result. We will now do a rerun of that particular bunch as the last event of the day,” said the State association secretary.

Clearly, many in that bunch must have been very angry when they returned to do the event all over again this evening.