Swimming
| FAMILY ADVENTURE |  | | | SWEET FRIENDSHIP | | | | GIBSON ON THE BOX | | | | STAGE AND MUSIC GUIDE | | | | WHEELS NEWS | | |
|
|
|
Francis leads way as records tumble
 |
| Danielle Francis |
DANIELLE Francis led a spree of county and championship records as the opening weekend of the 2008 Dorset Championships produced a feast of quality swimming.
Bournemouth Dolphins' Francis and Martin Littlefair and Ferndown Otters' Chris Campbell and Kim Rowles all broke county senior or junior records, making them the fastest Dorset swimmers in history in their events.
The total tally for the weekend amounted to five senior and three junior county records, five senior and five junior championship records and probably more than 30 age group best times, although these have yet to be confirmed after problems with the results software.
As Bournemouth Dolphins chief coach Graham Bassi said: "The bar has gone up. The Dorset championships have raised their standards and all the clubs that competed should feel excited about the future of Dorset swimming."
Of the many outstanding performances, it was Francis's winning time of 17:05.35 in the women's 1500m freestyle which took top honours, at least in terms of GB points, the formula used to compare times across the events.
As well as lopping 12 seconds off her own county and championship records and moving her from 20th to 13th in the British short course rankings for the last 12 months, it was also valued at 846 points.
In fact, there were only five swims all weekend over the 800 points mark, two of them from Francis, the other three from Kim Rowles.
Two of these came in one event as the former team-mates produced what was arguably the race of the weekend in the women's 200m freestyle final.
Rowles, 15, swimming in her first local event since her move from Dolphins to Otters, took an early lead, turning at 50m in 29.66.
But Dolphins' 17-year-old Francis moved ahead around the halfway mark and went on to win in 2:04.77 (822 GB points) with Rowles taking the senior silver and junior gold in 2:05.08 (817).
The county and championship records for this event are held by former internationals Karen Legg (senior) and Caroline Smart and Alex Savage (junior) and will take some beating - especially Olympian Legg's Dorset senior record of 1:56.45!
But like Francis, Rowles had other opportunities to break county records and she took one in the 800m freestyle, dipping under nine minutes to knock four seconds off her own county junior and championship junior records with a winning 8:58.65.
Her winning time of 4:54.03 in the 400m individual medley broke her own junior championship record and brought her within four seconds of Caroline Smart's Dorset senior and junior records.
In points terms, these two swims were worth 822 and 824 points respectively.
Ferndown's England schools champion Chris Campbell, 16, took Dorset men's butterfly swimming into new waters when he first broke Tom Cunningham's county senior record with a time of 2:09.72 in the heats of the 200m, then demolished the new mark with a winning 2:06.80 in the final.
There was no other competitor within nine seconds of him.
It was one of four Dorset senior titles for Campbell, who also won the men's 100m breaststroke in 1:08.27, the 400m medley in a championship record time of 4:43.08 and the 100m backstroke in 1:00.25, missing Iain Brown's 20-year-old championship record by 0.01sec.
Bournemouth Dolphins' 12-year-old Jay Olenicz took the junior backstroke title in 1:06.37 following a heat time of 1:05.36, which ranks him second in Britain in his age group.
In the men's 1500m freestyle, Dolphins' Martin Littlefair, 14, and Joe Poynter, 13, became the first and second Dorset juniors to go under 17 minutes.
They won the senior and junior gold and silver in times of 16:37.36 and 16:45.84 respectively - both well inside former international Jamie Wearn's junior county record, which had stood for 15 years, as well as the senior and junior championship records.
Both boys are also within striking distance of Seth Chappels' Dorset senior record, which stands at 16:32.07.
Littlefair was equally impressive in the 800m freestyle, which he won by 19 seconds in 8:49.85 to slice 12 seconds off the Dorset junior and senior records held by Wearn and Chris Wilson.
He also underlined his versatility with a junior title in 100m breaststroke and a senior and junior silver in the 200m freestyle behind Ferndown's national medallist Craig Freeman, whose winning 1:57.18 clipped 0.2sec of Ben Gibbs' junior championship record.
Joe Poynter's bronze-winning 2:02.43 ranks him number one in the country in his age group.
Ferndown Otters had two clean sweeps of the medals in the championship finals through Emily Freeman, Nicole Scott and Cat Close in the women's 100m backstroke and Naomi Vides, Fran Hughes and Kim Rowles in the 100m breaststroke.
Connor Sleightholme led Seagulls' results with junior bronze medals in the 800m freestyle and 200m butterfly while team-mate Stefan Wyper took bronze in the junior 100m breaststroke.
Becky Brown put Poole on the podium with a senior bronze in the 1500m freestyle.
Subject to confirmation, age group record breakers are thought to include Seagulls' Peter Griffiths (10yrs 200m fly and 200m free), Ferndown's Clodagh Dear (12yrs 1500m free), Noah Vides (11yrs 100m breast) and Dolphins' Natalie Moore (13yrs 100m back).
2:00pm Wednesday 13th February 2008
Print 
Email this
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
