12 hours ago
From car park to arena for 'world record performances': Facility for Singapore World Aquatics Champs unveiled
SINGAPORE: A new 4,800 capacity arena to host the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore was unveiled on Monday (Jun 16), less than a month before the meet begins.
Built in the car park next to Leisure Park Kallang mall, the facility has a competition as well as practice pool with the same specifications. Foundation work began in December last year, with construction from January to May this year.
The arena will host swimming and artistic swimming competitions during the Championships, and also stage the World Aquatics Masters Championships' swimming and water polo events.
Measuring 50m by 26m and with a depth of 3m, the competition pool was designed with "incredible performances" in mind, said Mr Mark Chay, co-chair of the Singapore 2025 organising committee.
This is significantly deeper than the 2.15m La Defense competition pool at last year's Paris Olympics, which had been criticised by some for being too shallow, resulting in fewer records broken.
"You can look at the whole infrastructure here, the overflow gutters, the kind of lighting that is required for broadcast, and, of course, the opportunity to host this many people in one venue, it really is designed for world record performances," said Mr Chay, an ex-national swimmer.
"We give all our athletes the opportunity from start to finish, to actually perform at their best."
The facility makes use of the starting blocks from the Paris Games, with pool temperatures kept at a constant range of 25-28 degrees Celsius.
Ahead of the Championships, the facility will host the artistic swimming and swimming competitions for the Southeast Asian Age Group Aquatics Championships later this week.
The World Aquatics Championships, which features the six sports of swimming, water polo, diving, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving, will be held from Jul 11 to Aug 3.
Singapore was picked as the host after the biennial event was relocated from the Russian city of Kazan in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
"VERY POSITIVE" TICKET SALES
Mr Chay said that the arena represents "how far the sporting landscape has come".
"And to build this from scratch .... in such a short period of time, really is a testament of our industry prowess. Of course, our different partnerships, both in government as well as non-government and private sectors as well," he added.
Speaking to the media, Mr Ko Chee Wah, chairman of Kin Productions, which oversaw the design and build of the arena, said that the idea was to build a facility akin to a permanent structure.
"It was really quite intimidating ... to build such a big facility within a period of six months. And although the specification was to build a temporary structure, you cannot build a temporary structure when you are going to cater to the public coming in, you have to provide a facility that is as safe as a permanent structure," he added.
"So you are actually building a permanent structure, and it has to conform to all the regulatory requirements from the government and the agencies and do the specifications and technical requirements of the World Aquatics Championship body."
The full costs of building the temporary facility and hosting the event has not been publicly revealed.
In February this year, then Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth Eric Chua said that construction cost of the temporary facility is still being finalised, but it is expected to be "comparable" to the cost borne by other host cities that built temporary facilities to host the event.
He added that tourist revenue generated from the upcoming World Aquatics and World Aquatics Masters Championships is projected to hit S$60 million (US$44.7 million), with 40,000 international visitors expected at the month-long event in Singapore.
Mr Chay echoed similar comments on Monday when asked about the cost of the arena and whether it was within the budget.
"At these major championships, they built temporary venues for all events. But for us, we're using an existing venue at OCBC Aquatic Center for two of our major events - diving as well as water polo. And we built this facility for swimming as well as artistic swimming, and of course, in Sentosa, we'll have open water and diving," he said.
"I'm happy to say that the cost of organising this, building this facility, is comparable to that of Doha as well as Fukuoka (World Championships)."
Late last year, the Pan Pacific Hotels Group, Trans-Eurokars Mazda and OCBC were unveiled as the event's hotel, automobile and banking partners, with Singtel on Monday announced as the official network connectivity partner of the meet.
Mr Chay added authorities are "in the middle" of assessing what will happen with the arena after the meet.
"The focus is really building the arena, getting it up, getting it in shape to welcome the world, building for high performance aquatics performances," he said.
Ticket sales for the event have been "very positive", he added, with tickets sold out on some "key events and key dates", said Mr Chay.
He also said that he was confident that the event will generate "tremendous enthusiasm".
"The World Aquatics Championships is one of the most prestigious events in the world of aquatics, second only to the Olympic Games. It is an honour for Singapore to host this global showcase that will bring together the best of aquatics athletes from around the world," he said.
