Success for Lisburn swimmers against Ireland’s best

LISBURN City Swimming Club recently took a 9 strong team of swimmers to compete at the three day 2013 Dave McCullagh Memorial Long Course Gala held at the University of Limerick from February 22-24. The team of Beth Carson, Peter Sands, Ben Wiffen, Chloe Richards, Natasha Pollock, Hannah Watson, Fiona Cash, Alexandra Hunter and Rachel Bethel travelled with Head Coach Richard Gheel to compete against the best in Ireland in a meet that provides swimmers with the opportunity of European and British qualification times.

Peter Sands (Club Captain) led by example getting racing under way on day 1 with 100 freestyle. The highlight of his weekend came in the 400 IM where he achieved a British Youth qualifying time and reaching the A final of 200 backstroke finishing 5th. Beth Carson secured comfortable A finals in all her events finishing in silver position twice. Ben Wiffen swam fantastic pb’s in his 1500 freestyle taking bronze and 400 freestyle finishing third in the B final. Chloe Richards and Natasha Pollock both qualified for the 200 fly A final finishing 6th and 7th respectively and they both went on to reach the 100 fly A final. Natasha, Alexandra Hunter, Hannah Watson and Fiona Cash all made pb’s in the 400 freestyle with Natasha winning the B final and Alexandra coming 3rd.

The final session of the meet on Sunday afternoon featured 7 of the team in action again. Rachel Bethel, who had already secured European Youth Olympic (EYOF) times in her 100 freestyle and her 200 freestyle went in the A final of the 400 freestyle winning a silver medal behind Olympian Syrieka McMahon and securing her 3rd EYOF time of the weekend.

After a successful weekend, the team returned home having made 16 ‘A’ finals collecting 4 silver and 2 bronze medals and having made 8 ‘B’ finals and winning 3. All of the team competed hard, supported each other well, had some excellent personal best times and deserve congratulations for all their efforts. Commenting on the weekend, Head Coach Richard Gheel said “The swimmers have shown great commitment in training and the squad can now look forward to preparation for the Long Course Nationals in April. We already have two British Championship qualifiers and one European qualifier at such an early stage in the season. Results speak for themselves.”