The third session of Club Champs saw 258 swims deliver another 200 PB’S or first time swims. Holly Robinson broke the 9 yr old girls Club record for the 200 breastroke which had stood since 2006. Also in the 200 breaststroke Leanne Abrey set a new record for 14 yr olds and Grace Rayner broke her own open record. Grace went on to beat the previous record for the open 50 fly, but finished second to Lois Moore who is edging ever closer to breaking the 30 second barrier. In a good evening for Lois she also won the girls skins competition, remarkably for the first time, beating Aimee Abrey, Leanne Abrey, Eleanor Bevan, Alice Fender and Georgia Purkis. All six girls received cash prizes. Lewis Clark achieved his first County qualifying time for the season with another 10 new qualifying times being set by existing qualifiers as well as existing times being improved.
A number of excellent performances were noted in the previous article but to these can now be added Kizzie Beckwith, Florence Crowley, Alice Fender, Lois Goad, Helen Jennings, Sveta Nanda, Vanessa Parker, Jamie Sewell and Jess Walters, all of whom have improved or swum an event for the first time in all of their races. Leading the way in terms of improvements however are Shona McKenna (8 from 8) and Sam Gaines, with a magnificent 9 PBs from 9 races!
There are some massive PBs being posted by some of our younger swimmers as they improve or swim an event for the first time after a long interval; Lizzie Acres set a 60 second PB in her 200 back, only just bettering sister Natasha’s 57 second improvement in the same event, Amelia Clarke improved her 200 breast time by 24 seconds, Manas Kubal improved his 200 IM by 31 seconds, Rayne Marsh improved her 200 breast by 83 seconds, Mattias Morse improved his 200 IM by 28 seconds, Vanessa Parker improved her 200 IM by 43 seconds, Luke Pestaille improved his 200 fly by 20 seconds, Jamie Sewell improved his 200 IM by 21 seconds and in the same event Nathan Whiting improved by 48 seconds in addition to knocking 35 seconds off his 200 breast time. But Kira Doyle (20) deserves special mention after posting PBs in all five of her races, including nearly 3 seconds off her 100 free and 1 1/2 seconds off her 50 breaststroke; the improvements may not sound as remarkable as the youngsters, but if they are managing PBs of that magnitude in 5 – 10 years time they’ll be doing very well indeed!