Guildford City’s highest ever open water swimming turnout enjoyed a successful day at Rother Valley Country Park in Sheffield. For many of the swimmers this was their first experience of competing at National Level and one that they all enjoyed. In the junior age groups the swimmers completed two laps of 750m course, before peeling off into the finishing funnel to touch the banner at the end of the course.
In the 12 years age groups Max Windle competed in the first wave and completed the course finishing in 8th place. In wave 2 Piper Ridley-Parish and Charlotte Wensley took to the lake and both completed the course finishing 16th and 9th respectively in their age groups.
In the 13 years age group Guildford City had their highest turnout of swimmers. In wave 3 it was the boys turn and after a tough race and a sprint for the finish, Jordon McPhail won Guildford City’s first medal of the 2016 National Summer Championships taking the silver medal. Dan Donovan, Toby Stewart and Ollie Bedworth all had great swims around the lake in a tough field finishing in 7th, 11th and 17th place respectively. In the girls wave Izzy Bryant and Abi Poulton represented Guildford. In a hotly contested race with some neck and neck swimming between the two throughout, Izzy managed to touch the finishing banner first in 5th position with Abi closely behind in 7th.
Alex Hicks represented Guildford in the next wave with his first ever National Swim. He did a great job completing the course in 16th position in the 14 years category.
Our final swimmer of the day was George Smale who competed in the 17/18 years 5K course. In ever changing weather conditions George had a great swim, building through each 1000m lap picking off the competitors in front one by one. George finished strong in 7th place.
All of the swimmers completed the course and coaches Andy Browning and Lewis Dunford were very pleased with everyone’s swims.