Swimmers impress at Murihiku meet

Splash Palace was awash with yellow last Saturday for the 90th Murihiku Anniversary Meet.

Thirteen-year-old Erika Fairweather of the Neptune Club in Dunedin made the trip south to take part in the Meet.

Fairweather had been one of the standout swimmers at the NZ Short Course Championships where she took set four NZ Short Course Records to go with the three NZ Long Course Records that she already held.

To have swimmers of this calibre compete at Southland meets is a real bonus for the local swimmers.

The younger swimmers turned up in good numbers for the event and turned in some good performances.

With this being only the second long course meet so far this season it is a big change for the younger swimmers.

Swimming long course compared to short course is much harder and you see the form of the swimmers dropping off over the last 15 metres of each length as fatigue sets in.

Six swimmers made a clean sweep of their events as Clara Peniamina (10) of Kiwi Swimming Club won four out of her four events, Daniel Strang (16) of the host club Murihiku matched this by winning all four of his events.

Caleb Devery,10, of Murihiku backed up his success at the Orca Labour Weekend Meet by winning all three of his races.

Magnus Jamieson,11, from Murihiku also won all of his three events and swam a gutsy 200m butterfly by himself.

The 200m butterfly is hard enough as it is for an 11-year- old, let alone having to swim it by yourself.

Thomas Black was back in the pool racing in the weekend after a break from competing and made a good comeback by winning his three races.

Rounding out the unbeaten swimmers was Jackson Herrick, 13, of Orca who also won three out of three events.

The Hokonui Club of Gore had 11 swimmers at the Meet, which was the biggest turnout from Hokonui for quite some time.

Mariano Nani, the new coach in Gore, is making a big effort in growing the club and bringing through some younger swimmers into the competitive ranks.

The Meet finished with the annual Murihiku handicap races.

There are four races of 100m covering the four strokes, with the top two boys and girls from 14-and-under and from 15-andover from the earlier 100m events making up the eight person field.

Each swimmer may only swim in one of the handicap races and has to swim in the first stroke that they qualify in.

The 13-year-olds dominated the results in these handicap races with Milli Low, Rhianna Short and Jackson Herrick from Orca, winning the backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke respectively.

The freestyle handicap race was taken out by Xander Marsh (15) of Hokonui.

It is amazing how the incentive of winning money can help turn in some great racing.

All the races were exciting for the spectators as the backmarkers caught up and in some occasions overtook the earlier starters.

*Fenton Herrick is the father of Jackson.