The Region Short Course Championships took place on Saturday 6th/7th November 2021 at the new 50m pool in Winchester. The competition was classed as a Junior/Open with a Junior being aged 16 years and under on 31st December. In order to comply with UK Covid restriction, no spectators were allowed and entries were restricted with many swimmers entries being rejected.
Samuel Lowe from the Guernsey Swimming Club had all of his entries accepted and swam exceptionally well improving on his times achieved only two weeks ago at the Tigers Open where he set a new 800m freestyle Island Record.
First up was the 200m freestyle where Samuel improved his time just enough to qualify for the Winter Nationals (NQ) being held in Sheffield in December. In the 200m Backstroke he won his heat quite comfortably coming 5th overall knocking 2 seconds off to finish in a time of 2:05.32 (NQ). Frustratingly, only just 0.02 of a second short of the Commonwealth B qualifying time.
In the 400m Freestyle Samuel got a good start putting in a strong performance for the first 200m finishing strong and improving his time by 2 seconds finishing in 4:03.89 (NQ). Although undecided whether to swim the 100m Backstroke, not being one of his stronger swims, having put in such a good swim in the 200m backstroke Samuel decided to swim the event and improved his entered time finishing in 59.42.
Just outside his PB Samuel finished the 100m Freestyle in 53.50. At the end of a very long weekend in the last heat of the last event, Samuel swam 1500m freestyle finishing in a new personal best and National Qualifying time of 16:25.02. Samuel will compete again at the Island Championships in Guernsey in November, at the Swim England Nationals early December and the Winchester Winter Open just before Christmas.
