Hollingsworth ends series on a high

THE in-form Thomas Hollingsworth produced a superb personal best to set a new championship record in the final event of the Barracudas NRG Series. In the men's 16-and-over 400m individual medley, Hollingsworth produced particularly strong butterfly and backstroke legs at the start and incredible length off every turn saw him finish in 4min. 41.28sec.

Matthew Allen was another record-breaker in the 12/13 age group when he clocked a very creditable 5-14.51.

It has been a very successful season for Allen in which he has shown strength in all four strokes in both sprint and distance events.

The fastest time of the day for the girls came from Rachael Le Page in the 14/15 section. She slashed her previous best by four seconds to take the title in 5-29.98.

Jenny Salmon and Kelsey Russell were the victors in the 16-and-over and 12/13-years categories respectively.

Lauren Judge made the greatest improvement in the event, swimming more than 13 seconds inside her previous best.

It was surprising that there were any PBs at all, considering that the previous evening the same swimmers competed in the gruelling 1,500m and 800m championships staged at the newly reopened Grammar School pool.

Jonathon Le Noury took the 1,500m title with 100m splits around the 66-7 seconds mark to produce a very respectable time of 16-42.21 ahead of Hollingsworth, who clocked 16-53.56.

The two were neck and neck for the first 500m, with Hollingsworth having the edge on every turn, but from 600m, the experience of Le Noury took him forward to the finish.

Ian Hubert, Matthew Allen and Edward Dickinson all improved on their entered times by over a minute with Jack Le Poidevin improving by more than two minutes.

Rebecca Charlton won the 800m freestyle title in 10-07.10.

The most improved swimmer was Gemma Nicolle, whose 11-09.37 was 44 seconds inside her best.