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Warrender Crowned Scottish Champions!Swimmers from Edinburgh’s Warrender Baths Club are celebrating this week after being crowned the Top Club at the Scottish National Short Course Championships held last weekend (12-14 January 2007) at Glasgow’s Toll Cross pool.
Competing against the country’s best swimmers, plus several high profile teams from England, Warrender won the overall team title by 238 points leaving the teams of Glasgow, Stirling, Dundee, Edinburgh and Aberdeen trailing in their wake.
Leading the way for the Warrender club were Great Britain Senior Team member Lewis Smith, 2006 Commonwealth Games swimmer Fiona Booth and East of Scotland Institute of Sport member Billy Purnell.
Lewis confirmed his versatility by winning the Scottish Senior National title in his signature event, the 400 IM in a new personal best and world class time of 4:13.91. To this he added silver medals in the 200 backstroke and 200 IM behind Gregor Tait, the Commonwealth champion in both those events.
Billy demonstrated why he might be heading in the same direction as Gregor Tait by taking the silver medal behind him in both the 50 and 100 metre backstroke races, plus bronze behind Lewis in the 200 backstroke.
Whilst usually known for her butterfly and breaststroke prowess, Fiona turned her hand towards freestyle over the weekend and duly won the National title in both the 50 and 100 metre sprint events. She then added a third title in the 100 IM, as well as collecting silver medals in both the 50 breaststroke and 50 butterfly events.
In the Junior rankings Rosie Hood picked up the Junior National title following a great performance when taking the senior silver medal in the 200 backstroke, while Katelyn Stewart did likewise when placing 5th in the 50 freestyle.
Some of the best performances of all were reserved for the relay events. In the women’s medley relay, Rosie, Katelyn and Fiona combined with Sally Wood to take the gold medal in a new Scottish National Club Record of 1:59.07. Helen McRoberts switched places with Rosie for the freestyle relay and led the way to another National title with the four girls this time setting a new Scottish National Team record of 1:46.67.
Warrender Head Coach Ian Wright was delighted with the outcome, “This was a great team performance by all the swimmers. It is the second year in succession that we have won this award but it was much harder this year as some of the other teams were a lot stronger and we had lost a couple of good swimmers due to illness and academic commitments. The result reflects excellent depth in our team that goes well beyond the individual performances of our star swimmers.”
