Amateur swimmers dive into championship lanes
PERFECT strokes helped the super seven girls aged eight and under to record personal backstroke bests at Aqualibrium.
They joined 29 other swimmers, ranging in age from six to 16 years, at Kintyre Amateur Swimming Club’s annual championships last Saturday.
The afternoon’s competition started with both the 100m and 200m individual medley events. Competitors combine all four swimming strokes in the one event.
Caitlin Russell, 13, took the girls’ 13-andover event in a new PB of 2:53.78.
A club spokesperson said: ‘Fantastic swims in the girls’ eight-and- under 25m backstroke event saw all seven record new personal best times with Ailie Renton winning gold in 26.71.’
Twelve girls swam in the nine-to-10 years 50m backstroke with Rianne Coffield touching first in 48.41.
Over 100m William McLean took almost four seconds off his PB, finishing first in 1:38.04.
Iona Renton de- stroyed her previous time over 100m taking more than 10 seconds off to finish in 1:27.16 and take gold.
Seven-year-old Angus Woods, competing in his first championships, swam an excellent length of breaststroke breaking 30 seconds and finished first in 29.92. This was followed by an outstanding swim by Ruairidh Campbell, in the boys’ 100m breaststroke, where he knocked more than 10 seconds off his PB to touch first in 1:47.63 just in front of Jamie Colville. Caitlin Russell continued her fine form improving her 100m breaststroke time to 1:34.17.
In the butterfly, 16-year-old Ryan McGeachy recorded a narrow PB of 1:16.20 followed by Josh Horan who touched in second knocking more than seven seconds off his existing PB.
In the freestyle events Jamie Colville, 12, smashed his existing PB by 20 seconds to finish first in 1:22.25 and there was a closely contested swim between 13-year-olds Caitlin Russell and Astrid MacLellan.
Both girls swam personal bests of 1:11 with Caitlin just touching before Astrid in 1:11.04.
In the final event of the afternoon’s competition, the open 200m freestyle, both Caitlin Russell and Ryan McGeachy took the titles with excellent swims over eight lengths. After the points were tallied up, the 2017 club championship trophies were awarded to the following swimmers: Girls’ eight-andunder: Ailie Renton; boys’ eight-andunder: Angus Woods; girls’ nine-to-10: Violet Campbell; Max boys’ Graham; nineto-10: girls’ 11-to-12: Iona Renton; boys’ 11-to12: Jamie Colville; girls’ 13 -to-14: Caitlin Russell; boys’ 15-andover: Ryan McGeachy.