The swimmers, who were picked through a talent hunt programme named 'Bangladesh in search of best swimmers' and have been in long-term training under the supervision of Bangladesh Swimming Federation (BSF), will be in focus when the Saif Powertec 33rd National Age-Group Swimming and Diving Championships get underway at

the Syed Nazrul Islam Swimming Complex in Mirpur on Tuesday.

Former Korean coach Park Tae Gun picked 60 talented swimmers from across the country through a six-month programme and later those swimmers were brought under long-term training with the hope of building some quality swimmers for the South Asian Carnes. However, the Korean coach left Bangladesh almost a year ago, leaving the job of nursing those swimmers upon

four local coaches.

Out of the 60 swimmers, 18 have already been expelled for different reasons. Among the remaining 48 swimmers in the training camp, 20 have already been in the camp for the upcoming SA Games, which will be held in Nepal in December.

SA Games gold-winning swimmer-turned-coach Shahjahan Ali Rony is optimistic about the swimmers' chances to produce good results in the championships,

which was last held in 2017.

"In the last edition, the swimmers from the talent hunt programme won 22 gold medals for different teams. This time I am hoping even better from them. BKSP always dominated age-group swimming by winning maximum gold medals out of 100 events, but the selected swimmers have already reduced the domination of BKSP in age-group championships," said Rony, one of four local coaches taking care

of the swimmers.

Rony also believes that five or six swimmers can secure their place in the final squad of the senior team for the SA Games, but feels that those swimmers will need more time to produce good results at international level.

The participating swimmers will compete in 103 events in five age categories of the championships, informed BSF general secretary MB Saif at a press conference at the BOA headquarters yesterday.