Category Archives: Masters

Masters’ Travels Reap Records And Medals

Five of our Masters travelled in various directions during the first quarter of 2022 to compete, all returning with medals of varying colours.

Bracknell and Swansea were the two destinations which reaped a new Beds County record for Dave Wright and new Club Masters’ records for Dave, Colin Mayes and Sam Bradley.

Welsh Masters Medal Winners: Sam Bradley & Karen MacKenzie

A report (with a link to the full results) may be accessed here.

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.

OUR MASTERS ARE BACK TO WINNING FORM!!!

After 18 months’ absence due to the COVID pandemic, seven of our Masters’ squad revelled in being back in competition, all winning medals at the Barnet Masters Sprint Plus Meet. They won a total of 10 Gold, 8 Silver and 1 Bronze Medals. Three were also in County Masters record-breaking form. Read here for further details.

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

Medals And County Records At 2019 English National Masters

Team Luton’s swimmers gave an impressive display at the 2019 English National Masters Championships bringing home two gold, three silver and three bronze individual medals in addition to one silver relay medal – in “trunk splitting” fashion!

With a further 25 top ten finishes – that included four 4th and four 5th places – the thirteen swimmers who competed set numerous personal best times whilst establishing four new Beds County Masters records. That meant we finished as the 43rd highest points scoring club out of the 232 clubs that were represented, many of which had far more competitors. Read here for a full report.