All posts by AMG

Titles, Medals & Team Spirit At 2022 Beds County Championships

Eleven Senior and five Junior County titles with 32 Gold, 26 Silver and 20 Bronze Individual Age Group medals. After the Covid-pandemic induced break in 2021, the return of the County championships also saw numerous personal best times. These were achieved over a range of strokes and distances not only by our more experienced swimmers but also those having their first taste of competition in a 50m pool against youngsters from all the other Bedfordshire clubs.

Read the detailed report and go to the Beds ASA website for the full results

Trio Ranked in 2021 World Masters’ Top Ten Swims

Jo Mitchinson, Dave Wright and Graham Powell are all included in the World Top Ten Rankings for their Masters’ swims in the lists just released by FINA.

L-R: Graham Powell, Jo Mitchinson & Dave Wright

Jo was ranked 3rd (1500m Freestyle, ) 6th (400m Freestyle) and 7th (200m Backstroke) in the Ladies 40 – 44 years’ age group.

Dave claimed 6th spot in the Men’s 60 -64 years’ 200m Butterfly.

In the 65 – 69 years age group, Graham Powell was 5th (50m Back), 6th (100m Back) and 10th (200m Back).

FINA’s Top Ten relay listings were clearly incomplete, omitting all British club relay times from 2021. Other countries may also have been omitted but the English Nationals’ time recorded by Graham, Malcolm Barton, Dave and Alastair Gibb in their 240 – 279 years’ 400m Medley relay might have claimed them 5th spot. The combination of Dave, Alastair, Colin Mayes and Malcolm potentially also recorded the 8th fastest time for their 240 -279 years’ 800m Freestyle relay.

Best Ever National Masters’ Performance?

Our Masters won a total of 2 Gold, 6 Silver and 7 Bronze medals whilst setting 5 East Region, 15 Beds County and a further 6 Club Masters records at the Swim England National Masters Championships.

Multi National Masters’ medalists L-R: Graham Powell, Jo Mitchinson & Dave Wright

Read here for further details of the individual and relay team successes.

More Masters County Records…

Six of our swimmers competed the Bracknell Masters Meet, collecting 16 medals and setting four more County Masters records. Read here for more details.

L-R: Malcolm Barton, Karen MacKenzie, Jodie Armstrong, Michelle Neal, Kelly Cooke and Colin Mayes

East Region and Beds Long Course Masters Records For Jo

Congratulations to Jo Mitchinson on setting an East Region and 4 new Beds Masters records in the 40 – 44 years’ age group with her winning swims at the Welsh Masters Long Course Championships.

Jo Mitchinson: Double gold medalist at the Welsh Long Course Masters

Jo’s 200m Freestyle time of  2:21.53 broke the East Region record by 6 seconds whilst her time of 2:47.62 in the 200m Butterfly set new figures for the County’s 40 – 44 years’ age group record. Her 100m splits of 1:20.82 and 1:08.23 were both new Beds records; Jo’s freestyle split breaking the record club mate Kelly Cooke had only set back in January.

Top Ten World Ranking (Again)

With the FINA World Masters rankings for 2019 just being released it’s congratulations to Graham Powell, Malcolm Barton, Dave Wright and Colin Mayes. For the second successive year their time recorded at the English Nationals in the 240 – 279 years 400m Medley Relay was one of the ten fastest in the world.

240+ years’ 4 x 100m Medley Relay
L-R: Malcolm Barton, Graham Powell, Colin Mayes & Dave Wright

Record Breaking Start To 2020

The weekend of 18th /19th January saw our swimmers make a great record- breaking start to 2020.

18 year old Celyn Walmsley reduced her Long Course Ladies 1,500m Freestyle County record at the first gala of the 2020 Beds Championships held at Inspire.

Meanwhile Laura Smith (25), Sam Bradley (26), Jodie Armstrong (38), Kelly Cooke (43) and Malcolm Barton (64)  all broke Masters & Seniors records at the South East Long Course Masters down in Crawley. Read here for a detailed report on that Masters event, including Malcolm Barton alone smashing 2 East Region and 5 Beds County records over two days.

Malcolm Barton

Masters Excel in 2019 GB Team Decathlon Competition

For the sixth successive year our Men’s Team has finished in the Top 20 whilst our Ladies have leap frogged up to 48th position, having only made the top 100 for the first time in 2018. Our Men were the highest ranking in both the East Region and Beds County whilst our Ladies were the 2nd highest female team in the County behind South Beds.

12th  GB Men’s Team : Alex, Graham, Dave & Alastair

Read here for a detailed report summarising everyone’s individual scores