GWANGJU /South Korea/, July 24. /TASS/. A relocatable high diving pool, which should serve as a training ground for Russian athletes, can be built in Crimea, member of the International Swimming Federation (Federation internationale de natation, FINA) Technical High Diving Committee, two-time Olympic champion Dmitry Sautin told TASS following the completion of the Gwangju 2019 World Aquatics Championships.
"There are people interested in building this [training] ground for high diving. It has already begun, we can say that it will be soon constructed. In addition, it will be a transformer, it could be disassembled and moved to another region," Sautin said.
"The high diving training ground should look approximately the same as here, at the World Championships. We are now considering Crimea, where there is only a diving tower atop a rock for now," he pointed out.
The FINA high diving facility used at two championships already costs $600,000. "But we have specialists who can construct it for half the price," Sautin underlined.
In the high diving competitions (27-meter tower) at the World Championships, Russians were placed 12th (Nikita Fedotov), 17th (Artyom Silchenko) and 22nd (Igor Semashko).
"We don’t have a training ground, therefore, our leading high divers - Artyom Silchenko and Igor Semashko - have nowhere to train. In fact, they are only diving here. This can hardly be viewed as a training process. We need to build our own, so that we have a place to train. Then, we would be able to compete as equals," Sautin said.