Bury St Edmunds-based West Suffolk Swimming Club enjoys success at Swim England Masters National Championships in Sheffield
A team from West Suffolk Swimming Club headed to Sheffield in the last weekend of October to compete in the Swim England Masters National Championships.
The swimmers celebrated individual success with Jake Thomas-Mansfield storming to gold in the 200m butterfly (18-24 age group) as well as claiming a stylish silver in the 100m event, pulling back to take the touch in second place after turning at the 50m mark in fourth place.
Thomas Sarah (30-34 years) claimed a convincing bronze medal in the 200m breaststroke, nearly four seconds ahead of the fourth-placed swimmer.
Meanwhile, Myles Turner triumphed with gold in the 400m individual medley (IM) with a winning margin of 15 seconds over the next fastest time in the 18-24 age group and in the fastest time of the Championships.
The quartet of Jake, Myles, Thomas and Charles Whyte, secured bronze medal winning finishes in both the open 4 x 100m freestyle relay and the 4 x 100m medley relay, the latter beating the existing East Region record by three seconds.
The female 4 x 50m freestyle team of Molly Peacock, Charlotte White, Shannon Dalligan and Maya Harris were tantalisingly close to a podium finish, taking fourth place in this event and fifth in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay.
The foursome pulled out all of the stops for their 4 x 100m medley event, claiming a silver medal with Charlotte leading out on backstroke, Maya taking the breaststroke leg, Molly the butterfly and Shannon bringing it home on freestyle with a near-six second margin over the bronze medal winning team.
They also claimed bronze in the 4 x 50m medley relay.
Charlotte and Shannon joined forces with Jake and Myles to beat the Royal Navy swim team and Nottingham Leander to the bronze medal in the mixed 4 x 50m medley relay, behind swimming titans Derby Excel and Portsmouth.
They were unlucky to miss a medal in the mixed 4 x 100m freestyle relay, finishing in fourth place (with Molly replacing Charlotte in this event).
The Swim England East Region Short Course Championships 2024 took place at Luton over the weekend of November 2-3, with six WSSC competitors taking part after the forced withdrawal of Samuel Chamberlain due to injury.
Elizabeth Wright had a busy weekend with six races on her card; breaststroke over 50m, 100m and 200m, 100m IM and the 50m and 100m freestyle.
She swam consistently on or close to her entry times, setting a new personal best in the 100m IM and close to her season’s best in the 200m breaststroke.
Fly specialist Jake took more than a second off his extraordinary gold medal winning 200m butterfly performance at the previous weekend’s National Masters Championships to post a season’s best and the fastest time in the heat by two and a half seconds.
The evening’s final was a two-man race, with Jake leading over the first 100m, just edged out of the Regional title-winning position in the second half of the race to silver medal place.
Jake also booked a place in the final of the 100m butterfly, off his entry time and finishing in sixth place.
The 2023 Regional Champion in the 200m backstroke, Myles, returned to Luton to defend his title.
He trailed in second place until the final 50m, Myles took the heat by nearly a second in an impressive show of tail-end speed.
The final took a similar shape with Myles turning in third place at the 150m mark and then turning on the speed to pull back in the final 50m.
He posted a new season’s best in the final, dropping 0.29 seconds from his heat swim.
It wasn’t quite enough to take the title; with an agonising 0.01 second fingernail margin, Myles was pipped to silver medal position.
