Success for Sarah’s record attempt at the British National Masters
A small group of Guernsey Swimming Club Masters competed at the British Masters and Senior Age Group championships held in Pond Forge 50 meter pool in Sheffield. For Sarah Whitchurch it was a chance to compete in the 400m freestyle event which is an event she is unable to swim when competing in IPC (disability) events.
The previous British Long Course record for the 400m freestyle in the S5 category was set in the Pond Forge pool by Susan Warren in 2014 in a time of 10:20.20, with Sarah’s short course PB being 9:30.51 she was confident that she had a good shot at going under the existing record. Sarah started strongly swimming the first 50m in 1:00.35 maintaining her pace at an average of 1:10 for each 50m increasing it to 1:06 for the last 50 Sarah finished her 400m in 9:06.64 breaking the existing record by 1:13.56.
Sarah will now have to wait for the swim to be ratified to see if her swim will be accepted by the British Disability Swimming as the new British Record. Sarah also put in some good long course swims in the 50m, 100m & 200 Backstroke 1:04.58, 2:15.54, 4:43.96 and the 50m breaststroke 1:2938.
Ester Isseppi who in her own words said that she was taking this completion easy and decided to swim in some different events in preparation for next year when she moves up into a new age group
came 2nd in the 200m individual medley 2:58.57 and 2nd in the 200m backstroke 3:00.99. Ester also swam in the relay teams for Spencer SC gaining Gold in the 4 x 100 mixed medley relay and a silver in the 4 x 50m mixed medley relay.
Pauline Hogg who usually spends most of her spare time either refereeing local, Jersey and county competitions or training up the numerous swimming officials took the opportunity to get in some very valuable long course competition in preparation for the Europeans in May. Pauline put in some excellent swims particularly in the 50m Backstroke where she produce her fastest time for several years coming 3rd in her age group in a time of 42.06, Pauline also came 3rd in the 100m backstroke 1:33.32, 4th in the 200m backstroke 3:22.72 and 7th in the 400 freestyle.
Also competing was Naomi Wakeford who swam in the 50m, 100m and 200M backstroke. The weekend was spread over the weekend starting at 8am on the Friday and finishing 4pm on the Sunday, 3 Long days of top quality competition with numerous British, European and world records being broken in various age groups with some events event’s having 150 competitors. With several of the swimmers coming over to the Guernsey Swimming Club Masters event being held over the weekend of 16th 17th and 18th April we look forward some very good swimming and several new short course records being set.