Recognition for our swimmers
Promising Southland swimmers Jacob Blomfield and Sophie Shallard have been selected to be part of the New Zealand national development squad.
This squad is aimed at supporting and developing the top one per cent of age group swimmers in the country.
Selection for this squad is based on the Fina points that they have achieved in their events at the national age group championships.
Fina points are a system of scoring a swimmer’s time in relation to the world record in that particular event.
Being part of this squad will see them supported by Swimming NZ and they will also be eligible to attend the national development training Camp.
Meanwhile, Queen’s Birthday Weekend saw 39 local swimmers head north to Dunedin to compete at the annual Neptune Queen’s Birthday Weekend Meet.
There were more than 400 swimmers at the meet including one from Swim Rotorua, one from Capital Swim Club and another from South Gippsland Bass Swimming in Australia, so this was one of the biggest meets that the younger Southland swimmers had taken part in.
The local swimmers had only been back in training for a couple of weeks before taking part, so the number of personal best times were pleasing to see.
Magnus Jamieson, from Murihiku, won three golds in his age group, while fellow Murihiku swimmer Jacob Blomfield picked up two golds, with Amie Pratt, from Orca, and Jack Corkery, from Murihiku, taking one gold each.
This year the event concluded with each age group gender competing in a ‘‘skins event’’.
Entry into this was for the top eight swimmers in each of the 100m individual medley events.
The swimmers had to swim five 50m races with a 75 second turnaround from the finish of the race to the start of the next.
The event started and finished with a 50m freestyle with the other three strokes taking place in a random order, which was announced by the starter as the swimmers returned to the blocks.
Two swimmers were eliminated in the first race, then one was eliminated in each subsequent race, leaving three swimmers for the final 50m freestyle.
With a $200 first prize, competition was fierce and the crowd support was deafening.
The only Southland swimmer to pick up prizemoney was Amie Pratt in the 11-12 year old girls’ when she finished second by 0.05 seconds behind the winner in the money leg, having won three of the earlier legs.
This was a top effort by her as she was swimming in lane eight as the slowest qualifier.
The highlight of the meet was seeing Erika Fairweather, from Neptune, break the New Zealand 13-year-old girls 400m individual medley short course record in a time of 4:57.81.