One of the largest team of swimmers (51 in all) have returned from a very successful weekends swimming at the City of Bradford Christmas Meet and the Warrington Graded Meet.
The City of Bradford Christmas Meet was celebrating its 21st anniversary and again attracted a very high quality field of swimmers from tops clubs across the country with some 21 meet records set to underpin the quality of the meet. Isle of Mans top swimmer was 11 year Olivia Rawlinson who scooped 1 gold, 2 silver and a bronze medal to make her the top 10/11 year old girl at the meet. Olivia's swims continued and improved on the high standard she set the week before at Lloyds TSB League Match. Gold came in the 100m back with a new national time of 1:15.26 seconds over 2 seconds ahead of Alice Shaw from Salford. Silvers improved her national times in both the 100m fly and 100m free, team mate Kate Beilich raced to third place in the 100m free only 0.6 of a second outside the national time, Olivia's last medal a bronze came in the 200m Individual Medley with another new National time. As well as Olivia and Kate getting among the medals Kaysee Craine struck bronze in the boy's 10/11 years 100m breast and Giselle Riley raced to bronze in the 12 years 100m free. Giselle took 4th place in the 100m back and along with Andrew Isaac (two sixty places), Matthew Quayle and Niall Killey one-sixth place each this was the most successful Isle of Man Team to visit the meet.
Whilst twenty swimmers were at the Bradford Meet thirty-one swimmers were on the other side of the Pennines taking part in the Warrington Graded meet for the first time. The overall results were amazing with a total of 22 gold medals, 20 silver and bronze medals, plus 61 other top six places and 28 speeding tickets saw the Isle of Man team placed second overall club behind Borough of Kirkless from Huddersfield and Neil Cowley winning the top boy of the meet award. Fourteen Isle of Man swimmers raced to gold medals with Rachel Ganley taking four gold and two silver. Double golds went to Neil Cowley, Tom Kelly, Matthew Brand, Louis Cannel, Sarah Stannard and single gold to Libby Hurdman, Siobhan Walshe, Emma Clague, Andrew Wignal, Karen Renicle, Daniel Shimmin, Matthew Cheeseman and David Quine.
The twenty-eight speeding tickets were awarded to swimmers who have improved their swim times and swam faster than the allocated times for events they raced in. The great level of speeding tickets and gold medals along with the very good results from Bradford provide more proof of the increasing standards of Isle of Man Swimming as we come to the end of the 2003 season. In 2004 we look forward to more swim meets across in the early part of the new year, the remaining Lloyds TSB League Matches plus the Distance and National Championships.
Max Stewart,
National Coach
