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FERNDOWN Otters' Zoe Watson surged up the national age group rankings as she led another weekend of quality swimming at the Dorset County Championships at Littledown.

Her winning time of 58.30sec in the 100m freestyle makes her the second fastest 15-year-old in Britain in the 25m pool while her 400m time of 4:22.48 brings her alongside team-mate Kim Rowles in the top five.

The 400m time was also the highest-rated swim of the weekend in GB points terms with a value of 816.

Watson took the senior and junior titles in both events and led a Ferndown clean sweep of the senior medals in the 100m as Emily Freeman and Nicole Scott took the silver and bronze.

Team-mate Chris Campbell continued in his rich vein of form by setting the only county record of the weekend with a winning 57.36 in a men's 100m butterfly final which saw the first five all inside the senior championship record.

Campbell is now the top-ranked 16-year-old in Britain in all three butterfly distances.

Ferndown's 15-year-old Craig Freeman topped another fine weekend when he slashed two and five seconds off the senior and junior championship records to win both titles in the 400m freestyle in 4:05.69.

Otters' coach Tony Watson highlighted the common ground between Campbell, Freeman and Zoe Watson, his daughter.

"They are all really honest in their training and if they miss a session, it's because there is a really good reason," he said.

"They are hard-working, competitive swimmers who thrive on that hard work."

Freeman also took the junior 100m freestyle title in 53.09, breaking the junior championship record set in 1995 by Jamie Anderson.

The men's gold went to Bournemouth Dolphins' William Harrison in 52.21, 0.8sec outside Seth Chappels' record.

In the 200m backstroke, Craig Freeman was again the senior and junior champion, winning the men's title by four seconds from Dolphins' Nick Marsh and Jay Olenicz, whose bronze-winning 2:19.89 makes him the second quickest current 12-year-old in the country.

Ferndown's Chris Wignall took the junior bronze.

Few local swimmers have been on a steeper improvement curve in the last two years than Dolphins' 15-year-old Martin Littlefair.

In the 400m freestyle, his time of 4:08.51 was also inside the old championship records as he took the senior and junior silver medals to Freeman's golds.

He then underlined his versatility by breaking the senior and junior records with a time of 2:14.13 in the heats of the 200m individual medley.

He was fractionally slower in the final but still quick enough to hold off Ferndown's Dominic Macdonald and Alistair Hardie in the senior honours and his own team-mates Joe Poynter and Jack Thorpe in the junior medals.

Littlefair was also the junior champion in the men's 200m breaststroke as he and 13-year-old Joe Poynter finished second and third to their senior team-mate David Bogaard, 26, whose winning time of 2:23.44 knocked six seconds off Ashley Savage's championship record.

Littlefair's time of 2:37.33 will rank him highly at national level while Poynter's 2:38.65 ranks him second in his age group.

Yet another championship record fell to Ferndown's Cathy Close, who won the women's 200m backstroke in 2:19.62.

Dolphins' Natalie Moore was the senior runner-up and junior champion in 2:26.41.

The women's 200m breaststroke final was a thrilling race with Fran Hughes, 15, touching just half-a-second ahead of Ferndown team-mate and national age group champion Naomi Vides, 13. Their times were 2:37.30 and 2:37.85.

Deb Cure completed an Otters clean sweep of the championship medals with the senior and junior bronze.

There was a similar monopoly in the 200m medley with Emily Freeman winning for Ferndown in 2:23.95 from Hughes and Vides, who took the junior gold and silver ahead of junior bronze-winning team-mate Marika Rolt.

Ferndown were almost as dominant in the women's 100m butterfly with national schools champion Nicole Scott taking the gold in 1:03.40, Emily Freeman the silver, Zoe Watson the senior bronze and junior gold and Anne-Marie Taylor the junior silver.

Seagulls' Peter Grifffiths dominated the boys' 10yrs age group with five gold medals and a competition best time (CBT) of 5:02.51 in the 400m freestyle.

Two other Seagulls also struck gold - Isabelle Frampton in the 11yrs 100m butterfly and Charlotte Vatcher in the 16 and over 200m breaststroke.

Poole's best-placed swimmers were silver medallists Phoebe-May Notley, Becky Brown, Samantha Ledden and Declan Callahan.

Other swimmers breaking CBTs included Dolphins' Jay Olenicz (12yrs 100m free, 200m medley), Amelia Maughan (11yrs 100m freestyle) and Joe Poynter (13yrs 200m medley, 100m butterfly, 200m breast), Ferndown's Harriet Higgins (10yrs 200m breast), Dominic Macdonald (16yrs 200m medley), Todd Price (11yrs 400m free) and Craig Freeman (15yrs 100m fly).

4:41pm Wednesday 20th February 2008

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