SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS 2007

The County held perhaps its most successful Championships during the three years they have been staged at the Manchester Aquatics Centre providing many of the younger swimmers with their first experience of competing in a long course pool.

Once again there was fantastic support from the clubs in terms of entries and it was lovely to see wonderful support from the parents with a full balcony for almost every session. The Swimming Committee has been keen to work with the coaches to develop a spirit of teamwork and it was great to have evidence of that during the competition on the poolside.

There were many highlights of the competition which was held over two weekends in March but perhaps three of these were the achievement of the Austin family from Preston SC (Cameron, Justin, and Shauntelle ) who each emerged triumphant as winners of their BAGCAT category, the British Junior record set by Daniel Sliwinski (Preston) for the 50m Breaststroke and the British Records S6 Category set by Heather Fredriksen for the 200m and 400m freestyle.

The top club from the Championships was the City of Manchester Aquatics SC while in the Age Groups it was the City of Salford SC.

Thanks must also be extended to Championships Secretary, Toby Tunstall, and his team for all their hard work over the two weekends in organising such a great meet. If you have any comments or suggestions to make for further improvement please do not hesitate to forward these for consideration.

We hope that this successful event will spur on our athletes later in the year as they attempt to defend the National County Team Championship for the sixth time.