Hopes of having the Daley siblings back to compete in the Validus Bermuda National Championships at the Aquatic Centre this weekend have been dashed.

Ben Smith, the Bermuda coach, who watched Elan claim 11 medals at the Carifta Championships in Kingston, Jamaica, in March, had hoped Elan, Elijah and Ethan would all return from Canada to compete.

“It conflicted with their competition overseas,” Smith explained.

“With the results Elan has put together in the past two seasons it would have been great to have the opportunity to see her, but unfortunately not this time.”

Racing starts today and tomorrow at 6pm before the competition continues on the weekend with races from 8.30 to 9.30am and then again in the afternoon between 4 and 6.30.

All of the local-based swimmers who competed in the recent Schroders0 Spring Long Course Championships will be in action, including college-bound Jesse Washington.

“We had a four-day competition with the Schroders Long Course Championships, which was the setting of the stage for the National Championships,” Smith said.

“Everybody who was pushing to qualify for this one has done that and now we’re looking forward to some fast swims.

‘We’re looking for all our swimmers who participated at Carifta and potentially will be competing at CCCAN [the Central American and Caribbean Amateur Swimming Confederation] to be performing here. Kai Legband, who won a couple of medals at Carifta, is now on island. He’s training and competing in New Jersey.”

Also missing from the meet is top Bermudian women’s swimmer, Madelyn Moore, who recently broke her own national record in the 50 metres freestyle in 25.95sec.

She is continuing to train and compete in Plymouth, England, but will return to the island next month to prepare for CCCAN.

“Peyton Zelkin and Adam Young, who are in school overseas, and Brett Smith and Evan Farrow who are in prep school in the US will be here,” Smith added. “Jesse Washington will be there and all the other swimmers who competed in Carifta like Logan Watson-Brown and Brian Desmond.

“The way the nationals is set up there is a 12 and under category and 13 and over category, so we will be looking to see who is going to battle to be champion in each of those categories and hopefully we can get a couple of records. We had some fast swimming two weeks ago. After some fine-tuning we will be expecting even faster times.”

Smith admits the Aquatic Centre pool lends itself to fast times. “We’ve had Olympic qualifying time at that pool, so we’re pretty pleased with the results that we get there,” Smith said.

“The swimmers are pretty excited about it. Since September this is the event everybody has been training for. For some of the swimmers who didn’t get the opportunity to travel overseas to compete, this is the highlight of their year.”

The CCCAN Championships will be held in Aruba from June 26 to July 6.