Records tumble at meet

LOCAL swimmers defied the odds to produce some outstanding performances over the first couple of sessions of the NRG Open this weekend. Twelve records were broken on Friday evening and Saturday morning alone, with the majority falling to Sarnian competitors and Alison Frankland, coach of host club Beau Sejour Barracudas, felt this was a good return.

In her role as Guernsey team manager for this summer's NatWest Island Games, she was also pleased to see the efforts of her swimmers.

'As far as the Island Games swimmers are concerned, this is good practice,' Frankland said.

Tom Hollingsworth was a fine example of this on Friday evening when he broke Ian Powell's 50m backstroke record and the 50m butterfly mark set by Alexis Militis, despite having sat a lengthy geography exam that day.

The Barracuda was having an intriguing tussle with Guernsey Swimming Club star Ben Lowndes over the weekend and the latter produced an excellent win in the 200m fly to take more than a second off Powell's former record having trailed Hollingsworth at halfway.

But perhaps the most remarkable race of the early sessions came in the men's open 1500m freestyle.

No fewer than five competitors clocked times under James Dickinson's previous record, with Jonathon Le Noury leading them home in 16min. 34.24sec.

Four other Barracudas - Victoria Parfitt, Hannah Lamb, Robyn Le Friec and Jeremy Osborne - broke records in the first two sessions, as did GSC 12-year-old Matthew Butt and visitors Dan Halksworth and Amy Pallot of Jersey Tigers and City of Southampton's Chris Jones.

'It is obviously exciting for local youngsters to have competition of this standard on their doorstep,' said Frankland. 'As well as the UK visitors, it is nice to meet up with friends from Jersey and have a good competition.'