Gloucester City Open Meet 20/21 June 2009
The Gloucester Open Meet provided the opportunity for Cinderford swimmers to put on a dazzling display with 28 swimmers competing and achieving 23 gold, 15 silver and 6 bronze medals between them. Swimmers also collected an incredible 14 speeding tickets for improving their times to exceed the upper limit time and 3 swimmers - Paige Bowles, Rebecca Toomer and Nathan Peck - walked away with top boy/girl awards in their age groups.
All rounder Ceris Westlake took an excellent haul of 7 gold medals in all of her races ranging from 50m breaststroke to 200m butterfly; Nathan Peck took a well deserved 6 gold medals at 100, 200 and 400m distances, 5 PB’s and 1 speeding ticket (50m butterfly) and Rebecca Toomer sprinted to gold in 4 races including 100 and 400m freestyle and collected 2 speeding tickets. Terrific performances by Paige Bowles saw her eventually take gold in the 100m backstroke and a silver in 100m freestyle after an amazing 5 speeding tickets and a determined Morgan Peck was pleased with gold in the 100m butterfly and 2 silver medals in 200m freestyle (16 second PB) and 100m breaststroke (a magnificent 36 sec PB) after achieving speeding tickets in the 50m breaststroke, 50m and 100m freestyle (again with a 12 sec PB)!
In the 100m breaststroke Nia Westlake, Lauren Mitchell and Rebecca Toomer swam side by side in the final heat with less than ½ second separating them in a nail biting finish taking 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places with the winner from Ledbury just 100th of a second faster.
Nia collected an excellent gold for her 100m backstroke and 5 silvers for breaststroke and butterfly, Lauren has an outstanding race to take gold in the 200m freestyle before going on to achieve 2 silvers and a bronze. Jake Parker had a great race to take gold in his 50m butterfly with a new time and also 2 bronze medals. Billy Harris proved he can do all strokes, collecting speeding tickets in his 100m IM and 100m backstroke with an amazing 5 second PB, and 3 silver medals including an 8 second PB in his 100m butterfly. A good solid performance saw Cassie Smith picked up a bronze medal in the 50m freestyle.
10 year old Casey Davis impressed to take gold in the 50m freestyle and got a 5 second PB in 100m IM and Jess Bayliss (also 10) won bronze for a well executed 100m butterfly race, Jess also achieved a PB of 4 seconds in her 100m IM and an unbelievable 25 second PB in her 100m backstroke race. Todd Montague sprinted to the finish winning gold for his 100m backstroke, and took 7 seconds off his 200m freestyle time with brother Frazer having a great meet achieving silver in the 50m freestyle, taking a superb 20 seconds off his 200m freestyle and 8 seconds off his 100m breaststroke.
Some incredible improvements in times were made with Kurtis Nash sprinting into the record books with a 28 second PB in his 100m freestyle race and a 15 second PB in his 100m IM. Josh Peck took 16 seconds off his 200m freestyle and 8 seconds off his 100m backstroke. Catherine Burn took 5 seconds off her 100m freestyle; Matthew Cook took 4 seconds off his 50m freestyle; George Fear took 5 seconds off his 100m IM; James Owston took 6, 6 and 9 seconds respectively off his 100m backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle times with brother Chris taking a 3 second PB off his 50m breaststroke. Amy Martin took an incredible 18 seconds off her 200m breaststroke and Danny Collins took 4 and 6 seconds off his 100m freestyle and IM times.
Other swimmers improving on their times were Natasha Bayliss (100 Back, 200 IM); Alex Collins (100 Back, 100 Free); Mitchell Savage (50 and 100 Back, 50 and 100 Free); Luke Nash (50 Breast); Molly Hek (50 and 100 Breast, 50 Free