2014 was a year of some great achievements, Individual and relay records broken, and great swims both home and abroad.
North West Region Distance Meet, Blackpool
8 Swimmers from Trafford took part. They brought home 8 golds and a couple of silvers. A good start to the year.
Lancashire Masters Championships, Blackpool.
9 swimmers made the trip and returned with a haul of 15 golds, 11 silvers and 8 bronzes!
British Masters Long Course Championships, Swansea.
Alec Johnson was our star with 4 golds from his 5 swims. It was so nearly 5 from 5 as he only just missed the 5th gold by 7 hundredths of a second in the 100 free!
Richard Symons came 3rd in the 400 IM.
World Masters Championships, Montreal.
Richard Symons was our sole representative.
He swam came 9th in 800 free and 100 fly and recorded PBs in both. He swam another lifetime PB in the 400 IM to pick up a bronze medal!
North West Region Sprint Meet, Blackpool.
24 swimmers made the trip to the Fylde coast and were rewarded with 49 gold medals! Nev Barton broke the 50 Breaststroke Record!
Open Water. As the weather starts to warm up, our ever-increasing number of swimmers who have an interest in the outdoors, start to take to waterways around the region.
10 swimmers took part in the Great Manchester Swim and 4 in the Great North Swim.
Mike Boyle and Laura Bowden competed in the Uswim competition and managed very creditable swims in the gruelling 15k event Laura coming 3rd and Mike 8th. Well done.
Richard Kennaugh and Ian Griffiths went north to swim a 5k swim in Lake Coniston. With times well under 3 hours they were very pleased with themselves.
These relatively short swims were nothing to the marathon distance that David Randall undertook this year. With his training and competition swims he reckons to have swum over 600 miles. Unfortunately the weather unexpectedly turned and he was unable to finish the crossing.
Cheshire Sprints, Macclesfield.
We had 27 swimmers from Trafford competing and we came home with 44 individual golds were collected and 8 team medals. Rachel Barton broke the British Record in the 100 m IM. She was awarded the Claire Dickenson Trophy for Top woman of the meet in light of this achievement.
The team too, was victorious and collected the Tom Walker Trophy for the top club. This trophy was donated by a prolific Masters swimmer who sadly passed away last year.
ASA Masters National Championships, Sheffield.
We had 21 individual swimmers taking part and 16 relay teams. Our overall medal tally was 44 medals of various colours.
We had number of record breaking swims:
Lucy Lloyd-Roach finally put her Nemesis in the 200 fly to rest claiming her first individual British Record. She also picked up a gold in the 100.
Rachel Barton broke the British 200 freestyle record with a lead off swim in a 4 x 200 relay. She wasn't satisfied with the time in the first relay so went and broke it by another second the next day! In between all that freestyle, she also set a British record in the 50 backstroke.
Neville Barton further reduced his British record in the 50 Breast and after 25 years of trying, broke a British record in a freestyle event (100 free). Well done Nev!
Other swims of note were Alec Johnson in his 100 fly with gold after beating his rival in the last 5 metres. Neil Mackinnon got gold in a close race in the 50 free and a further gold in his 100 IM. Richard Symons continued his heroics in the 400 IM getting gold by 0.11 of a second. He put everything into it and had to be helped out of the pool; a real case of Max and Build.
Our Men’s 200+ relay team of Alec, Steve Metcalfe, Dave Rees and Neville Barton broke not 1 but 2 European records in the 4 x 100 free and medley events!
The final event that Trafford swimmers were involved with was the Masters, Inter Counties, Leeds. 21/31 swimmers representing Cheshire were from Trafford. I organised the team this year and I managed to get a few swimmers out of retirement to swim including Emma Gage who swam some lifetime PBs having not been in the pool for 4 years… Exciting to watch!
Talking of exciting to watch, Nev went for his hat-trick and broke the 50 Breaststroke record for a third time this year!
The Cheshire team came a creditable 5th Nationally.
We're looking forward to 'building' on this success for 2015!
