Taipei blasted for building wrong swimming pool for Deaflympics

Jul 19, 2009, 14:16 GMT

Taipei - The Taipei City Government was blasted Sunday for building the wrong swimming pool for the upcoming Deaflympics as the pool only has eight lanes instead of 10 lanes as required.

Deaflympics is the world games for the deaf. Some 4,000 deaf athletes from 81 countries will participate in the 21st Summer Deaflympics to be held in Taipei September 5-15.

'Taipei won the bid to host the Deaflympics in 2003 and had six years to prepare, but still made this mistake. Because of the mistake, the swimming and polo events will be moved to a swimming pool in Hsinchu, 100 kilometres south of Taipei,' Chuang Jui-hsiung, a Taipei city councilor, said on cable TV channel TVBS.

'How could this mistake have happened? How can you waste people's money like this?' he asked.

Yuan Shou-fang, an official from the Taipei City Government's sports department, said that construction of the swimming pool was delayed.

When it was time to build the swimming pool, they found that the space left in the main sports complex allowed only an eight-lane swimming pool.

'But this swimming pool has diving boards, so that is something new for Taipei,' he said while inspecting the pool with Chuang.

Chuang called Yuan's answer 'stupid' because diving is not included in the Deaflmpics.

Deaflympics, previously called World Games for the Deaf, is sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee and held by the the CISS, the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf.

The games are held every four years and the first Deaflympics was held in Paris in 1924.