Even with tough qualifying times there were almost 1500 individual entries submitted for the 2019 South East Regional Championships held over four days at Wycombe Leisure Centre. All swimmers who had achieved the automatic qualifying time were accepted for those evens and where there was space available, swimmers who have not achieved the automatic qualifying time but have achieved the base time and were closest to the automatic time were considered for the events in the 15, 16 & 17 and over age groups.
Charlie-Joe Hallett and Sarah Whitchurch were medallists for the Guernsey Swimming Club, following on from a strong performance two weeks previously at the Portsmouth Northsea Open Meet, Charlie-Joe again has some great swims making the finals in the 50m, 100m & 200m breaststroke events improving on his personal best for the 100m Breaststroke just missing out on a bronze finishing 4th. Charlie-Joe had a great swim in the 200m individual Medley finishing 1st in his heat to make the final ranked 3rd fastest. He started with a strong butterfly leg touching in first place slightly ahead of the pace he set in the heats, with a steady backstroke which is his weakest stroke he dropped two places coming into the breaststroke leg his number one stroke Charlie-Joe powered on to regain the lead into the freestyle where he was just piped to the touch finishing with the silver in a new personal best time of 2.11.59.
Multi Classification Swimmer Sarah Whitchurch had a great weekend improving her personal best times in all her swims, competing against other classified swimmers ranging from 1-14 the swimmers swiming for point which are derived from their times against the world record in their classification. Sarah won the gold in the 50m backstroke and silver in the 200m freestyle finished 4th overall in the 50m, 100m freestyle events.
Samuel Lowe and Ronny Hallett produced some good strong swims with both boys having moved up from short course events (25m pool) to the long course championships (50m pool). Samuel and Ronny will be making their debut at this year’s Island Games in Gibraltar in July.
Charlie-Joe’s swim have moved him up in the British rankings and at present he has two in the British Nationals to be held in Glasgow and two swims in the English Nationals to be held in Sheffield. Sarah has also qualified for the English Nationals and the British Para Nationals for 4 swims, a very busy year for the Guernsey Swimming Club swimmers.
Full Guernsey Swimming Club results.
