Bennett's golden show

9:33am Wednesday 8th August 2001

Members of Beckenham Swimming Club produced the best perform- ance for 15 years at National Swimming Championships held at Sheffield last week.

Among many personal bests, David Bennett won gold in the 50-metre butterfly, beating England international James Hickman into second place. Although in the 100m butterfly, Hickman gained his revenge as David came second.

In the men's medley relay, Beckenham took silver behind the University of Bath but ahead of both very strong squads representing the City of Leeds and Loughborough University

Anthony Hine was third in the 100m breaststroke and fifth in the 50m breast-stroke.

The depth of the Beckenham club's talent was demonstrated by Tom Harnett's three semi-final places and the girls' under-12 medley relay team which came ninth, and the boys' under-12 freestyle relay squad in 11th.

The next major event for the club's swimmers will be the Short Course Championships, which double up as European trials, in Norwich later this week.

Meanwhile, the Orpington Ojays Swimming Club sent its biggest ever team an eight-strong strong aged 16 and under to Sheffield.

Notable achievements included Charmaine Brown's fourth, sixth and seventh places in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke respectively.

Marie Heselden came fifth and eighth in 200m and 100m breast stroke races, Katie Bowman eigthth and ninth in the 400m and 200m individual medley events, and from Georgina Redman who was eighth in 100m breaststroke.

A special mention must go to Hazel Colbourne who, at 12-years-old is the youngest member of the squad, and had qualified for 10 national events.

She came 19th overall out of 209 competitors in her age group national swimmers a fantastic achievement.

The other members of the Orpington Oays' squad were Stewart Ford, Helen Chan and Emily Brown who all swam well.