Distance Freestyle – 15th January @ Wolverhampton
Worcester’s swimmers got off to a flying start at the 2023 County Championships
As always, the first block of events were the Distance Freestyle races – this year held at Wolverhampton on Sunday 15th January
Star of the show for Worcester was undoubtedly Zara Beaumont who was crowned Senior Champion on both the 1500m and 800m Freestyle, a fantastic achievement
In the 1500m event, she showed real class to win by almost 10 seconds. However, doing the double was always going to be hard – fatigued after the 1500m and racing “fresh” girls not attempting both races, she had to dig super deep but in a race where the top 5 competitors were separated by only a handful of seconds, Zara proved victorious, taking a brilliant Gold medal by a mere 0.7s
However, several other Worcester swimmers enjoyed significant success too on the opening day of the 2023 Championships
In the 1500 Freestyle, there were excellent Silver medals for Asha Mahanta and Theo Rogers in their 15-year old age group, Theo also finishing 3rd overall in the Men’s senior championships; whilst Matt James, representing his home Club Evesham, won a super Bronze in the 16-year old age group
In the 800 Freestyle, Dylan Lewis (2nd, 14/u) and Abigail Haldane (3rd, 15/u) showed fantastic early season form to deservedly take podium places, many congratulations
Although outside the medals, the other Worcester competitors – Carmen West, Jasmine Kilmartin, Lincoln Lewitzkyi and Robert Gearey – swam beautifully too, with Lincoln’s 1500 Free (50s Personal Best!) and Robert’s 1500 Free (Qualifying Time for West Midland Championships) particularly notable. Well done to them all