Sharing Guildford with the National Armed Forces Day celebrations, Surrey Masters came to town to Surrey Sports Park for another highly successful Masters Championship.
A record entry of 176 swimmers took part. With 25/50/100m on each stroke, plus 200 Free and 100 IM, there was something for everyone, be they a Masters Record holder or a newcomer in their first Masters meet. Ages ranged from youthful 18 to evergreen 84, with our centurion John Harrison in the role of excited spectator this year. The theme of the day was “Best in UK at being best Masters in the World” a fitting tribute to Surrey Masters providing 6 of the UK’s 10 World-ranked #1 Swimmers. Citations here: SURREY MASTERS TOP THE WORLD
A flypast by the Red Arrows was a nice touch to start the day. The meet then exploded into life with Guildford City’s Ellen Thomas leaving the lads in her wake as she ducked under 2 minutes in the 200 Free. She then proceeded to repeat the dose with an awesome sub 60 100 Fly three events later.
Mike Hodgson, also Guildford City, only a few hours after his regular Saturday morning training session, lowered the GB Masters Record for his 45-49 Age group to 1:07.37.
Results for each session are here and have been sent to the ASA Masters Rankings Database.
Session 1: Events 1-10: results session 1 events 1 to 10v2
Session 2: Events 11-21: results session 2 events 11 to 21v2
Session 3: Events 22-32: results session 3 events 22 to 32v2
The VICTOR LUDORUM trophies are awarded to the highest points scorers in 10 year Masters Age groups plus the Seniors. Winners and points scores for all are here (ladies 18-24 will be revised):
Victor Ludorum (Men): victorludorum men
Victor Ludorum (Ladies): victorludorum womenv2
Swimming was conducted in the best competitive spirit throughout the day, exemplified by the compeition for the Team Trophies. With their large team sizes Croydon and Godalming were always likely to be there in the mix at the end, and so it proved. Croydon’s Men took the Mens Trophy with Godalming second and Guildford City third. Godalming’s Ladies had a strong finish to the day to retain the Ladies Trophy ahead of Croydon and Dorking. With Croydon retaining the Relays Trophy, this was enough to see them retain their Top Club Trophy by the slim margin of 41 points from Godalming who no doubt will be waving a pair of speedos at John Harrison and pointing him towards the pool next year:
Ladies Trophy (ie exc Relays): team results ladies competitionv2
Mens Trophy: team results mens competition
Relays Trophy: team results relay competition
Top Club Trophy: team results overall competitionv2
Surrey County ASA President Paul Finch presented trophies to the Teams and Victor Ludorum winners. Many thanks to all those who assisted in the Meet: – Surrey Officials, led by Di Gamble, Ben Smith for announcing, Denise Wheeler for doing the medals, SSP staff and all the swimmers and spectators for making it such a great day.
Jim Boucher.