The Masters South Island Short Course Swimming Championships were held in Blenheim at Stadium 2000 on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th July with great success (even with a power blow-out on the generator switchboard for the first hour on Saturday morning which held up the racing). Competitors came from the length of the country; with Masters swimmers from clubs in Auckland through to Invercargill taking part.
As yet unratified by NZMS, there were 8 national records broken:-
Old Record New Record
Mens 50-54yrs 800m Freestyle Steven Prescott 10:56:00 9:22:31
Mens 50-54yrs 200m Freestyle Steven Prescott 2:12:97 2:09:02
Kim Harker 2:10:37
Craig Beeby 2:11:16
Mens 50-54yrs 400m Freestyle Steven Prescott 4:39:24 4:34:13
Mens 50-54yrs 50m Backstroke Craig Beeby 32:37 31:62
Womens 50-54yrs 200m Backstroke Christine Jones 3:01:48 2:56:09
Womens 50-54yrs 100m Backstroke Christine Jones 1:24:64 1:23:56
Mens 40-44yrs 50m Butterfly Brett McGuigan 28:52 28:18
Mens 40-44yrs 50m Freestyle Brett McGuigan 25:84 25:55
The Blenheim Swimming Club kindly helped out with officiating at the meet, and I believe they enjoyed the event as well ; with being able to see the ‘masters' competing to such a high standard and keeping the light-hearted banter up, even at times, as they were getting onto the starting blocks.
For those swimmers who worried about keeping their goggles on their eyes; local and oldest swimmer of the meet Art van Leeuwen showed this is never a problem after starting his race off the blocks, swimming the event, finishing, then finding his goggles were still on top of his head, where they had been left before the start of the event.
Two of the local swimmers, Geraldine Piper and Barbara Taylor, Blenheim have come through from Adult Learn to Swim, joined Masters this year and now taken part in their first competitive meet, so you definitely do not have to have been a swimmer before.
The final event of the meet was the 6-Pack Relay which was "officially" won by Dunedin/QEII - there was an unfair advantage with ‘home brew' Speights used.
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