Romford Town Swimming Club
established 1900
RTSC Masters Gala Reports
British Masters Long Course Championships 2008
Manchester Aquatics Centre 20th – 22nd June 2008
This year saw Romford Town Masters attend this meet with seven swimmers; Jill Complin (J age group), Barbara Boxall (F group), Dawn Palmer (B), Kay Hamilton (B), Kira Fawke (S), Tom Enright (E) and Gary Wraight who attended purely to swim in two relays and so wins the team spirit award for 2008.
The evening session on Friday saw Romford’s first swimmers, and despite arriving too late to swim in the warm up both Dawn and Kay swam in the 200m IM with Dawn taking the gold and Kay finishing in 5th place. Kay also swam in the next women’s event; the 100m Fly and took the bronze medal. So the first session saw two medals out of three swims.
The first session on Saturday saw Tom finish 7th in the men’s 400m Free, and in the women’s 400m Free Jill finished 1st in her age group, with Barbara 7th, Kay 2nd and Kira 5th in their respective age groups. Jill, Barbara and Kira followed this later in the session with the women’s 50m Free and they finished 2nd, 5th and 8th respectively in their age groups. The last event in this session was the mixed 200m freestyle relay and this allowed Gary his (much awaited) first swim of the weekend. Along with Dawn, Kay and Tom, Gary swam in the 120+ age group and finished 4th by less than 0.5 sec.
The second session on Saturday started with Tom taking bronze in the men’s 200m Fly, followed by Kay swimming the same distance in the women’s event and coming away with her first gold of the weekend. The next contested event was the women’s 100m Free and Jill took silver, Barbara bronze, Dawn silver and Kira 5th place in their respective age groups. The final event of this session was the mixed 200m medley relay and this was Gary’s final event. With Dawn swimming the backstroke leg, Gary the Breaststroke, Kay the Fly and Tom the Freestyle and despite Gary losing his googles, the team managed to take the bronze medal in the 120+ age group.
The final evening session on Saturday was the 800m Free and both Jill and Kay again won gold in their respective age groups with Tom taking 4th in the men’s event.
The first session on Sunday started with the women’s 40m IM with Dawn taking silver and Kay 4th place, and in the men’s event Tom finished 5th. The next event saw Barbara finish 7th in the women’s 100m Breaststroke.
In the final session of the meet on Sunday afternoon, Jill again won silver this time in the women’s 200m Free, with Kira taking 4th place in her age group.
Overall the team came away with 5 gold, 5 silver and 3 bronze medals in the individuals and one relay bronze making a total of 14 medals. This can only bode well for the National Short Course Championships in Sheffield in October, when we are hoping for a bigger team and plenty of relay medals, so make sure you enter!
A special thanks has to go to Mike Boxall for his tireless support and his excellent filming of the races and to Gary for his marvellous feedback on everyone’s stroke technique!