The last four weeks have seen most of Swindon Dolphin’s competitive swimmers in action, either at the Masters Age Group championships, the South West Regional Championships, or the Tiverton Open Meet. Not to be outdone the younger generation had their chance to shine at the annual Novice Trophy Gala held at the Link Centre last weekend.
The youngest competitor at the event was 6 year old Jack Wilkes who collected his first two Swindon Dolphin medals, one of a total of 35 medal winners at the gala. Sharing top place in the medal table were Amy Connaghan, Ben Sarachi, Georgia Dicks, Matthew Jones, Neave Root and Sean Purvis, all of whom made a clean sweep of the gold medals in their age group by winning each of the 25M backstroke, freestyle, breaststroke and fly events and the 100M individual medley. Denice Gardo came agonisingly close to achieving the same only to be beaten into second place on her backstroke swim by the slimmest of margins, finishing with four golds and a silver.
The event also saw a 100M individual medley demonstration by members of the High Performance, Olympic and Junior Olympic squads enabling the young swimmers and their parents to see the standard to which they can reasonably aspire in future years as a member of Swindon Dolphin.
The medals from the Novice gala will be presented at the 2009 Swindon Dolphin Presentation Night / Dinner Dance.
Full results are available on the Competition Page.