Eight members from South Lincs Competitive Swimming Club acquitted themselves admirably at the Cardiff International Open with a string of strong swims and medal winning performances.
The meet was an opportunity for the Spalding swimmers to gain further long course experience and also to compete over the final weekend of the national qualifying window and ensure that swimmers held their places in the national rankings.
Following on the back of South Lincs’ super success at Regional Championships it was always going to be difficult to replicate such good results.
Of all the swimmers, Nitesh Anbazhagan had the best weekend of competition.
He was in action in the butterfly events and his preferred breaststroke events in the boys’ 11/12 years age group.
On day one, Anbazhagan swam a solid 100m breaststroke heat to qualify through to his age group final, however he couldn’t quite match his heat time in the final finishing in 1.20.76mins to take fourth place.
Day two brought him even greater success, an excellent heat swim in the 200m butterfly saw him once again through to the final with a new personal best (PB) time of 2.41.74mins.
In the final, a wonderfully fast opening half of the race helped Anbazhagan to another PB of 2.41.16mins and to claim the bronze medal.
The South Lincs ace also set a new PB in the shorter distance fly event, the 50m, where he dipped under 32 seconds for the first time to finish in 31.86secs.
The final day of competition saw more PB times and finals for Anbazhagan.
First of all, a great heat swim in the 200m breaststroke saw him lower his best by more than three seconds to stop the clock in a time of 2.56.87mins and move through to the evening finals.
A solid 100m butterfly swim also saw Anbazhagan make the final in this event with a time of 1.14.85mins.
The aim is always for a swimmer to go faster in the finals than they did in their heat swim and he did this with some style.
In his 200m breaststroke final he came back strongly in the second half of the race to improve his heat time and finish in 2.56.79mins and take his second bronze medal of the meet.
However, it was his final race that saw him on top of the podium with an excellent 100m butterfly final.
Out hard and fast Anbazhagan had the lead at the half way mark and was never challenged, he maintained his speed and worked hard to secure the gold medal with a three second improvement on his heat time for a new PB of 1.11.36mins.
Emma Croker was in fine sprint mode over the course of the weekend, at just 13 years of age Emma qualified through to the open finals of both the 50m freestyle and the 50m butterfly, where she lined up against girls considerably older than herself.
Croker posted a new PB time in the heats of the 50m butterfly of 29.13secs, while also producing strong heat swims in the 100m and 200m freestyle to qualify through to the finals in the girls’ 13/14 years age group.
That meant that, in one evening, she would have to swim the finals of the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle.
It was in the 100m final that Croker struck gold with a time of 59.81secs.
Still feeling the effects of that final, Croker was quickly back up for the 200m freestyle final where she was marginally outside her best posting a time of 2.13.74mins to take sixth place.
Ellisha Cookson also managed to produce some new PB times. In her 400m Individual Medley (IM), a strong final 100m saw her lower her best time by two seconds to post a time of 5.15.01mins and claim the bronze medal in the girls’ 15 years and over age group.
There was also a marginal new personal best time for Cookson in the 200m butterfly heats, where a strong final one hundred metres saw her stop the clock in a time of 2.30.69mins and qualify through to the final.
After a long day of swimming Cookson was outside her heat time to finish in sixth place in this final.
A final PB for her came in the 400m freestyle.
Taking an early lead in her heat and swimming away from the field, she had only the clock to race as she posted a big new PB time of 4.42.66mins.
Meanwhile, Lucas Garlike was taking part in his first long course competition and posted new PB times across all of his events.
In his preferred freestyle sprints, he posted 29.40secs in the 50m freestyle and 1.03.98mins in the 100m freestyle.
Garlike also posted best times in the 50m breaststroke (39.06secs) and again in the 50m butterfly (31.99secs).
Mollie Briggs was, in contrast, in action in the middle and distance freestyle events. She swam a strong 800m freestyle to finish in a time just marginally outside her best of 9.44.26mins and an excellent race in the 400m freestyle saw her again just miss breaking her best time with a 4.40.97mins.
Briggs produced her best swim in the 200m freestyle, where she set a new PB time of 2.16.54mins.
Luke Blanchard, Daisy Rummery and Aurinija Maliauskaite also competed over the course of the weekend.
Blanchard showed improvements on his times from Regional Championships and produced a new long course best time in the 50m breaststroke – dipping under the 34 second mark for the first time to register 33.92secs.
Rummery had a strong 200m freestyle along with Maliauskaite, as the girls swam to times of 2.15.85mins and 2.15.77mins respectively.
Overall, the weekend was very satisfying for the South Lincs’ head coach Keith Haynes.
He said: “We knew it was going to be tough coming out of preparations for the regionals last week and to expect to perform well this weekend. We’ve had some good swims though and all the swimmers have gained valuable long course competition experience in a brand new environment.”
