Coleraine Club members make a big splash

This national event brought swimmers from all over the UK, Germany, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and South Africa. This competition was a culmination of qualification events through the previous swimming season. The IAG Championships is the highest standard of swimming competition in Ireland and in order to qualify the three Coleraine Club swimmers had to reach qualification race time standards from Swim Ulster Qualifying Galas and then the Ulster Youth and Age Group Championships in the 50m Aurora complex in Bangor.

Molly Curry was seeded fourth in Ireland in the Girls 12yrs and under as Ulster Champion and Silver medallist in her two events, 100m breaststroke and 200m breaststroke respectively, in the 11yrs and under at the Ulster Youth & Age Group finals in March. At the IAG Championships in Dublin in July on Day 1 of the competition, suffering from a heavy cold she dropped from the seeded fourth to outside the top ten in the 200m breaststroke, therefore not making the final in the evening session. However Molly pulled out all stops on Day 2 to come in 4th in Ireland (in a field of 38 other competitors) in her preferred event, the 100m breaststroke, with a personal best time of 1.24.64 (an improvement of 1.45 seconds from the Ulster Championships), just narrowly missing out on a podium place by 0.42secs.

Following a very successful Ulster Gala Championship series, Charlotte Anderson gained selection by attaining the necessary qualifying times to compete in this top Irish swimming event. Charlotte qualified for three separate events over three days- 200m, 100m, 50m Backstroke.

Charlotte finished just 0.1 second outside of her 50m backstroke PB, for which she holds the Coleraine Club record and coming a very impressive 10th in Ireland in this stroke for her age group. The club would like to wish Charlotte all the best as she travels to Tenerife for her forth coming Elite Ulster Schools training camp which is being held in October.

Charlotte qualified for this camp being one of the top 10 female swimmers in Ulster schools and hopes to develop her talent and skills with the expertise of High Performance Coaches.

James swam the 200m breaststroke and 400m front crawl. He began with the 200m breaststroke on the Friday. He started off slowly in the first 100 leaving him with a lot of work to do.

In the last 100m he picked up the pace and came home strong and managed to pull off a new personal best in that event. In the 400m front crawl he went out with the intention of not repeating the same mistake he made in the 200m breaststroke

He planned to go out hard and hang on throughout the race and he did just this. He managed to pull off another personal best to finish what was a great weekend’s racing.

The three local swimmers did their club and coaches proud at this event which is the pinnacle of swimming in Ireland. They would like to thank their club coaches very much for their continued support and guidance and especially to Simon Walton who gave up time in the Club’s off season to continue training with these three competitors right up to the competition in July.