Over the past two weekends in May we’ve been holding our long-distance club championships, which cover all events from 200m to 1500m. An impressive 41 swimmers took part, ranging in age from eight to over 70, and they swam a total of 129 events. Club championships are an excellent chance to push the boundaries a little and we were delighted that 28 of the swimmers chose to do exactly that, swimming an event which they had never before attempted in competition. They all did extremely well, but special mention goes to Cora, who took on the challenging 200m butterfly, and Beth, Megan, Eliza & Nell or their first ever 1500m race.
There were numerous personal bests, headed up by Nell and Lottie who both took over two minutes off their previous 800m times. Other performances of particular note were Fearne, who improved her 200m individual medley time by over a minute and her 200m backstroke by a massive 81 seconds, her older sister Mary whose 800m was so evenly paced that the coach described it as “the best he had ever seen”, Dom (10) who produced a mature swim on his first ever 400m and Ellie who swam the immensely tough 400m individual medley, 200m breaststroke and 200m freestyle all in the course of under an hour.
Six swimmers were swimming in their first ever competition and here the honours go to Ada (8) who, despite having joined the club from swimming lessons under a month ago completed three events (200m freestyle, 200m backstroke and 200m breaststroke) in excellent style.
Very many congratulations to everyone and a huge thank you to all the officials and volunteers, without whom none of this would be possible.