Warrender Baths Club - Edinburgh's Premier Swimsport Club

Great Britain National Championships and World Trials
Manchester Aquatic Centre (50m) ~ 16-20 March 2005

Warrender sent five of its leading swimmers to the 2005 Great Britain World Championship Trials / National Championships held at Manchester Aquatic Centre from 16-20 March. This meet is the most important and highest standard event in the domestic swimming calendar. Although none of the five were in contention for a World Championship place, qualifying for the meet is a good achievement in itself and all five were hoping to pick up useful experience against the country’s best swimmers.

British Youth team member, 17 year old Lewis Smith had a busy week of six swims to negotiate culminating in his best event, the 400 I.M. on the final day in which he was aiming to qualify for the Great Britain team for this year’s European Junior Championships in Budapest in July. He commenced the meet with a time of 4:07.06 in the 400 freestyle, just outside his PB. This was followed by making three semi-finals, all in good times. In the 200 IM Lewis finished 13th overall with a personal best of 2:08.90. A further best time in the 200 backstroke of 2:07.98 ranked him 12th overall while 2:06.37 in the 200 butterfly placed Lewis 15th. On the final day in the 400 IM a time of 4:31.77 placed Lewis 6th in the heats but an agonising 0.2 shy of the European Junior qualification standard. The final was covered live on BBC television during which Lewis responded to the occasion to record 4:31.00, inside the magical barrier for qualification for the European Junior Championships and 7th place overall.

As one of Scotland’s leading sprint butterfly and breaststroke swimmers, Fiona Booth was determined to make a significant impact among Britain’s best. Quality heat swims of 28.51 and 33.71 for the 50m fly and breast events respectively, comfortably qualified Fiona for the semi-finals of both. Improving these to 28.50 and 33.35 superbly progressed Fiona into both finals, the first time ever she had reached a final at this level of competition. Although she was not able to go faster in the finals, finishing 8th and 5th overall, these events have given Fiona excellent racing experience which she will be able to put to good effect in future meets.

Scottish Youth Squad member Emma Harrison qualified for the two women’s individual medley events. Unfortunately Emma was forced to miss three weeks of training in February due to illness and by the time the trials arrived she was only just returning to full strength. However, in her typical determined fashion, Emma recorded times of 2:28.88 and 5:10.35 for the 200 and 400 IM events respectively before heading off to Swansea to represent Scotland in the Home Nations Schools International event.

Gavin Hunter and Katelyn Stewart both attended the World Trials for one event each. Enjoying her first ever experience at this standard of competition, 14 year old Katelyn competed in the women’s 100 breaststroke, touching home in 1:18.28, just a fraction outside her lifetime best. Gavin contested the men’s 50 backstroke and whilst his time of 28.83 was an improvement from the Scottish Spring Meet two weeks earlier, he was disappointed to just miss out on a semi-final berth.

Warrender’s summary of results at the Olympic Trials showed 3 personal best times from 24 swims including three finalists and three semi-final positions. Whilst it was pleasing to be represented in the finals and Lewis to gain European Junior selection, this is a meet where we need a higher percentage of personal best times recorded. We must aim to progress this next season and take more swimmers to the event each year.

Congratulations to the five Warrender swimmers at this competition

Scottish 5km Championships

Warrender fielded three young swimmers in this increasingly popular event. Competing in the 14/under category, Marnie Stewart, Oliver Hairs and Ben McCullough-Young all performed extremely well.

For most people, swimming the 1500m event is a big enough challenge and so the 5000m swim can at first seem very daunting. However, given that most training sessions are well in excess of 5000m, all Warrender’s leading swimmers are easily physically capable of performing the event. The main challenge is the psychological one of swimming a fast even pace continuously for just over an hour. Held in Glasgow’s Toll Cross pool, the 5km swim is therefore 100 lengths of that 50m long course pool. Psychologically dealing with the gradual fatigue that occurs and swimming back and forth for this length of time are the keys to success. In addition, unless swimming in the fast open age heat where it is one swimmer per lane, the swimmers have to contend with racing with five other swimmers in the same lane. I am glad to report the Warrender contingent were up to the task.

Twelve year old Marnie held a constant pace of 1:18-1:19 per 100m all the way to finish in 1 hour 5 mins and 45 seconds – and good enough to win the Girls 14/under title at her first attempt! Oliver swam the exact same time in the boys race and was delighted to win the silver medal. Not far behind in 1:08:20, Ben placed a very good fourth overall to emphasise the club’s strength in the event. All three reported that whilst challenging, they enjoyed the race and hope to be back again next year for another go.

Congratulations to all three swimmers on a great achievement.

Ian Wright

Head Coach

Commonwealth Youth Games: Bendigo, Australia - Results

You may well have read in the press a month or so ago about the fantastic performances of the Scottish team at this prestigious event. Warrender had placed two swimmers on the team: Lewis Smith and Malcolm Kerr. Chief Coach Ian Wright also attended the event as a learning experience and to ensure Lewis and Malcolm had every possible chance of success.

The competition took place in an outdoor 50m pool from 1-3 December in the former gold mining city of Bendigo, about 90 minutes drive north of Melbourne. Although being held at the start of the Australian summer, great weather was not guaranteed and indeed the first day of swimming saw the swimmers having to cope with cold, wet and windy conditions. Not quite what they expected for Australia and at about 12 degrees celcius, keeping warm was certainly a challenge!

Despite the inclement weather, the Scottish squad knuckled down to the task at hand and begun what was to become a very impressive medal haul. Lewis got the ball rolling for Warrender on day one with individual silver medal in the 400 I.M. behind Jersey's Daniel Hawksworth and a subsequent 7th position in the 200 breaststroke. Malcolm took 5th place in the 50 butterfly and was part of the 4x100 freestyle relay team that won bronze.

The weather improved significantly on day two and Malcolm was again among the relay medals, taking his second bronze of the meet after combining with Scott Houston, Mark Branch and Andy Hunter in the 4 x 100 medley relay. He added a further 5th place in the 100 butterfly while Lewis took a well earned 6th in the 200 backstroke.

The final day of action saw Malcolm and Lewis taking on the 200 butterfly, along with their team-mate from Glasgow, Charles Mills. A very close battle ensued and it was Mills who took gold, just ahead of a fast finishing Malcolm for an excellent silver medal. Lewis finished in 4th place but was happy with his time and would later take 6th in the 200 I.M. as well. In the final event of the meet, Lewis swam with Hunter, Houston and Robbie Renwick in the 4x200 freestyle relay and was delighted to win his second silver of the week and Scotland's 30th medal of the competition, just a couple short of the host nation's tally.

The whole Scottish team across all sports won 52 medals and thus, for swimming to contribute 30 of these was a fantastic achievement and a great profile lift for the sport in this country. Our congratulations go to all the swimmers, but especially to Malcolm and Lewis for their efforts, medals and contributions to one of the major Scottish sporting highlights of 2004.

National Squad Report

National Squad in 2005 has welcomed several new members to its ranks. Recently joined from Gold Squad (now knows as Junior National) are Rebecca Heavyside, Marnie Stewart, Rosie Hood, Emily McQueen, Craig Purnell and Benjamin Hui. Both Rebecca and Benjamin were British National qualifiers last year and have already made cuts for 2005's event. All six have first class attendance records and are a shining example of how hard work and dedication pays off with successful results.

This month also sees us formally welcome Sally Wood (14) and Helen McRoberts (13) to the club. Sally and Helen are members of Inverleith SC who have been training with National Squad every Wednesday evening for the past few months in order to boost their training routines. From now on however, Sally and Helen will be members of both Inverleith and Warrender, and will conduct the majority of their training with National Squad. Both girls enjoy training for all strokes and distances and have already become good friends with many of the squad members.

Training is proceeding well and the majority of the group are benefiting from a great bout of work over the Christmas holidays. While many people were putting their feet up for a rest over the festive season, most of National and Junior National Squads were hard at work training for the important meets coming up. Lewis Smith, Billy Purnell, Emma Harrison and Malcolm Kerr all spent a week (27th-31st December) in Stirling with the Scottish Youth Squad while the rest were racking up the kilometres at Merchiston and Leith Academy. Over the two week holiday, many of the squad completed over 100km of swimming and still managed a couple of days off at Christmas and New Year.

Scottish Schools Finals

Congratulations to all the Warrender swimmers who have qualified for the Scottish Schools Finals this month. The event, which takes place on Saturday 29th January, is held long course in Glasgow's excellent Toll Cross facility. If you want to find out if you made it through, check out the meet programme on the SwimScotland website: www.swimscotland.co.uk

Lothian Club Championships & Telfer Cup

A strong team of Warrender swimmers were selected to represent the club in these team scoring events on Saturday 9th January in Kirkcaldy. The event mixes young (11/under) with older (open age) swimmers and offers a good opportunity for the development of team spirit and comradeship with all swimmers racing to secure points for an overall team result as opposed to individual outcomes. I am delighted to report that we won both events! In the Lothian Region Club Championships we ran out overall winners of Division 1 ahead of Haddington in second and Hearts third. In the Telfer Cup (a series of four mixed relay events) we again obtained enough cumulative points to lift the trophy, just in front of Hearts and Fauldhouse. Congratulations to all swimmers who represented the club with such distinction at this meet and thank you to the coaching team of Gail, Russ and Hammy for their great efforts.

National Squad swimmer Lewis Smith is featured in September 30th Edinburgh Evening News and online at The Scotsman website.

http://www.sport.scotsman.com/other.cfm?id=1083922003

Smith out to make big waves

ROB EYTON-JONES

EDINBURGH’S Lewis Smith is one of 13 young Scottish swimmers who have been selected for British Swimming’s World Class Potential Programme.

The 15-year-old East of Scotland Institute of Sport athlete, who races for Warrender, was a member of the programme last year, but the rigorous entry standards mean swimmers must re-qualify each year.

Selection depends on achieving a single qualifying time. Smith, who as an Individual Medley swimmer (all four strokes in one race) is not accustomed to doing anything by halves, met the qualifying times in three separate events at last month’s British Long Course Championships in Sheffield. He set a new Scottish junior 400m Individual Medley record of four minutes, 35.06 seconds before clearing the bar also in the 1500 and 400m front crawl.

As for the future, Smith said: "I want to compete in the European Junior Championships, the Commonwealth Games in 2006, then the European and World Championships in 2007 and the Olympic Games in 2008."

Last updated August 17, 2005