Two Fins’ swimmers, Caleb Gray and Lilian Blair, won the right to compete at the highest level of age group competition in Britain by finishing in the top 3 in a designated event at the Scottish Open Water Championships. This gave them the opportunity to compete in the British Open Water Championships, held at Rother Valley Country Park, Sheffield, on 25 July.
While there were no expectations of being amongst the medals they did achieve some relative success.
The three Scottish male swimmers all improved their times they set at the Scottish Championships but because there can be so many variables in open water swimming this is not necessarily the most appropriate measure of how they performed. This was borne out in Sheffield where the two female swimmers posted slower times than they did at the Scottish (one of the three qualifiers did not enter).
The 14 years male 5K event was held at 10am where weather conditions were very calm, whereas the 13 year female 3K event was held at 4pm where there was a fairly stiff breeze which changed things completely and the swimmers returned slower times than those set at the Scottish.
A better guide to a swimmers’ performance is to compare their current times against the swimmers that they have competed against recently, over the same distance.
When we do this, we see that the most improved Fins’ swimmer is Caleb Gray.
The three Scottish swimmers finished the 14 years male 5K in 23rd, 24th and 25th places. The 23rd place was the top Scottish qualifier, Jensen Basketter, City of Glasgow, but Caleb reduced the previous gap, with Jensen, of 4 minutes 11 seconds to just 23 seconds. Caleb was 24th , 2nd Scot, by reducing a previous deficit of 3 minutes 52 seconds, with the third swimmer, to now being 4 seconds ahead.
It is now very tight among the top three Scottish swimmers in this age group.
Lilian finished 25th in the 13 years female 3K event increasing the gap on the other Scottish competitor by 11 seconds, bringing it to 56 seconds.
The other Scottish swimmer was 28th.
It is now a matter of building on this success.
Ken White
Club Press Officer