Regional Winter Championships 2019

Report on Winter Championships 2019

The Winter Championships were held at Millfield on 1-3 November in the short course pool. It attracted 241 male entries and 235 female entries from 48 clubs which was a similar number to the previous year, and all entries were accepted. The Saturday and Sunday programmes were run as two heat sessions with a short interval followed by a longer break and the finals session, this was to give the swimmers an opportunity to compete in the same way as the Swim England Winter Championships will be ran.

 Withdrawals from events were required by 4pm the previous day and the start lists were then posted on the Swimwest.org.uk web site as were the results of each when available. This did result in much fuller heats but there were still empty lanes and the swimmers are being fined £10 for each heat swim missed. Withdrawals from finals were made once all the heats were completed and unfortunately there were still a few empty lanes and these attract a £25 fine. The printed programmes contained only a list of all the swimmers and there was not a great demand for these from either spectators or coaches/team managers so are unlikely to be produced for an event where we can rely on modern technology to get the information to all and withdrawals are within limited timescales. Timekeeper sheets and starts lists for officials will still need to be produced.

 The standard of swimming was very high this year and there were 14 male and 10 female competition best times from both heats and finals. Leah Whittaker from Mount Kelly was the most successful female with 3 new CBTs and Cameron Williams from Dartmoor Darts achieving 2 Junior CBTs and these were also Swim England Junior records. A full list of the new CBTs can be found on the website: https://www.swimwest.org.uk/file/2019-cbts.pdf

 £50 Amazon vouchers were awarded to the top swimmers on FINA points for the single highest number and these were presented to:

 Junior Male        Cameron Williams            Dartmoor Darts                 100m Breaststroke          710points

Junior Female    Leah Whittaker                 Mt Kelly                              

Open Male         Thomas Dean                    Bath University                 200m Freestyle                 875points

Open Female     Georgina Coates              Bath University                 200m Freestyle                 843points

Para Male            Reece Dunn                       Plymouth Leander           100m Freestyle                              1076points

Para Female       Abigail Daly                        Devonport                          100m Backstroke              407points

 Awards were presented by the Regional President Mike Coles who was assisted on Sunday by the Dorset President Les Jessop, these were made during the heats for the Para swimmers and some of the juniors where no juniors were in the finals. The awards were made in two blocks during the finals sessions and most of the swimmers attended suitable attired, Thank you.

 A full contingent of officials were at all sessions and our thanks to all of them for their continuing support, however there were several clubs that did not provide the administrative volunteers as requested and we will be looking at way to ensure this does not happen in future.

 Below is the medal table for all events senior, junior and Para.