Championship swimming returned to England with the regional short course (25m pool) championships around the country.
The Swim England North East region held their championships at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in the centre of Sheffield. The pool there is one of only ten in the UK of international standard and numerous world records have been set there.
Challenging qualifying times meant only the quickest swimmers can compete and over 70 clubs from across the North East and Yorkshire all sent their swimmers including the giant clubs of Leeds and Sheffield. Four swimmers from Aycliffe-based Sedgefield 75 swimming club made the grade, three of them debutants at that level.
Tom Curran and Evie Weston both qualified for two events, Tom swimming superbly in 50m and 100m freestyle. Evie swam two 200m events; breaststroke and individual medley.
Filip Wilczynski had a stellar competition as he came away with 5 medals from 6 events. Triple gold for Filip as he won 50m and 100m backstroke and 50m butterfly. His 100m backstroke margin of victory was more than three seconds ahead of second place. He supplemented these with silvers in both 100m butterfly and 100m individual medley and also placed 6th in the 200m individual medley. Filip managed to set new PB’s in his five medal events. Not bad for your first regionals!
Emma Price returned having competed in 2019 and took on eight events and set PB’s in five of them totalling almost 26 seconds. Emma won bronze in 200m freestyle and then agonisingly took silver in 400m freestyle as she was pipped for gold by just three-hundredths of a second. She took 15 seconds off her 800m freestyle PB to win bronze and also swam 50m and 100m freestyle, 100m and 200m individual medley and 100m backstroke. The highlight of Emma’s competition however was, her 400m freestyle time was inside the required qualifying time to enter the English National Winter Championships, also at Ponds Forge in December.
A total of 18 swims and 8 medals was a fantastic result for such a small club, a result a lot of larger clubs would envy. Full results can be found at www.sedgefield75.com where you can also learn how you can join our growing band of Olympic hopefuls!