by Rod Hughes

Costa Rica’s star swimmer Claudia Poll is not yet ready to hang up her swimming cap and dry off. She is eyeing competitions for, in the newspaper La Nacion’s delicate phrasing, swimmers of “a certain age.”

A determined competitor with a wall full of medals from regional and international meets including the Olympics, she appeared in the Holiday Classic at Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, last December and in this country in January for the Millennium Master Tourney in January.

But, as La Nacion sportswriter Gustavo Jimenez notes, this does not mean that she is going to abandon going up against the elite. She is one of five aspirants signed up for the Peking 2008 Olympics with the national Olympic Committee. If selected to represent the country, (it is highly unlikely that she will be rejected) she will compete along with her countryman Kurt Niehaus whose specialty is in open water.

But her times in Ft. Lauderdale showed that she has a long way to go before she can be competitive. She had a baby in August and the nine months of down time told dearly. Still, trainer Francisco Rivas has no doubts she can return to her past form and she is famous for her dedication. She has until June 15 to trim her Olympic qualification times. Don’t usher her to a retirement rocking chair, yet…