Flitwick Dolphins Swimmers at ASA National Championships 2007

Disability swimmers Sam Tilbury and Claire Warne represented Flitwick Dolphins S.C. at the ASA National Championships in Sheffield from the 26th July to 1st August. Both girls were swimming in the Multi-Disability events where each swimmer competes in an Open age group and gains points for each of their events, dependent on how close they are to their own classification’s World Record for that particular event. Chief coach at Flitwick, Diane Brinkler, was in Sheffield with the girls and was very pleased with their performances.

Sam (16) is partially sighted and this was her first major long course meet since she received her disability classification of S13, SB13, SM13 earlier this year. She swam some excellent personal bests with her best result coming in the 400m freestyle with a 4th place — a result which got her noticed by British Swimming World Class Programme coaches. She reached finals in five of her eight events and had four top ten finishes.

Claire (14) has cerebral palsy, holds an IPC Classification of S5, SB5, SM5 and only joined Flitwick at the beginning of July. She is currently on the British Swimming World Class Development Programme and has already represented her country at the 2006 IPC World Championships where she came home with a bronze medal in the SM5 200m I.M. In Sheffield she swam two good personal bests in the 200m and 100m freestyle, winning her first national medal (Silver) in the 200m free, the gold medal being taken by Danielle Watts (26), the S1 World Record holder in this event. Claire was particularly pleased with her personal best in the 200m freestyle as this is an event she is targeting in her bid to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.

To find out more about Flitwick Dolphins or to arrange a trial, please phone Ann Wren on 01525 872107 after 6pm.

7 August 2007