Swimmers do well at McCullagh meet
SWIM Ireland’s 2018 McCullagh International Meet took place at the impressive Aurora Complex in Bangor recently with six County Sligo Swimming Club swimmers making the journey to the County Down venue.
This is one of the highlights of the Irish swimming calendar. Sligo’s Ronan Anderson, now studying at the University of Limerick, was competing under the Sligo Swimming Club / National Centre Limerick banner.
Ronan is now a member of the prestigious National Centre Limerick where he is training alongside some of the country’s best swimmers. Once again, it was the 400m Individual Medley event where Ronan performed best winning a bronze medal with a time of 4:52.66. Ronan also finished 8th in the 200m Individual Medley and 8th in the 200m backstroke.
Another one of Sligo Swim Club’s University of Limerick students was breaststroker Jade Murphy who finished in 8th position in the 200m breaststroke, 9th in the 100m breaststroke and 11th in the 50m breaststroke.
Eoin Anderson (17) also had a great meet making the A final in the 400m Individual Medley event. In his morning heat, Eoin swam the event in a time of 5:08.07, a new personal best by over 3 seconds. Eoin also qualified for the B final in the 200m Individual Medley where he finished in 7th place in a time of 2:23.34.
Carrie McDaid (15) competed in five events over the course of the three day meet, making the B final in three of them. In the 200m Individual Medley she finished in 5th place in a new personal best time of 2:35.30, while in the 100m backstroke she also finished in 5th place in the B final. She also competed in the B final of the 50m freestyle and she finished in 15th place overall in the 50m butterfly.
Fourteen-year-old Danielle Far- rell took part in four events. The highlight of these was her 800m freestyle race where she finished in 8th place overall in a new personal best time of 9:55.91. Danielle also had a great swim in the 200m Individual Medley, finishing in 8th place in the B final in another personal best time.
This year for the first time at the McCullagh International Meet, Swim Ireland had introduced age group events at 200m distances only 12-14 year olds. Sligo’s Ronan Kilcoyne (13) qualified for two events and had magnificent swims with personal best times in both of them. In his 200m backstroke race he swam a time of 2:32.55 (a PB of 3.54 seconds) to finish in 11th position, just missing out on a place in the final.
He also swam well in the 200m Individual Medley, finishing in 12th place overall from a total of 39 swimmers. His time was a fast one of 2:34.27, and a PB of 2.35 seconds. This was certainly a fan- tastic introduction to a major completion for the talented young Sligo swimmer who looks set to keep on improving his performances.
This concluded another busy weekend for the County Sligo Swimming Club swimmers and for their head coach Eduardo Santos who was very pleased with all the performances at this early stage in the long course season. The next major competition is the 2018 Irish Open Championships which will take place in the National Aquatic Centre, Dublin from Wednesday 4th to Sunday 8th April. In the meantime, the club will be competing at short course galas in both Athlone and Claremorris in the coming weeks.