All posts by AMG

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

Record Breakers…..At County, Club & Personal Levels

Congratulations to everyone who has improved on their personal best times, be at our recent Team Luton Open swim meets, National Arena League fixtures or East Region championships.

Matt Wright’s winning East Region victory over 50m Backstroke was a new Beds County record whilst his 200m Butterfly swim was a 7 second improvement on the Club’s record that has stood since 2004.  A review of that latest (11 November) update to the Club Records shows that between them, Jj Wilde and Rhys Davidson have also been beating times which have stood since the year they were born….. or even earlier!

Whilst it is the responsibility of swimmers or their parents to claim club records, personal improvements can be followed by logging into the Individual Best Times registers that are held for every swimmer and updated automatically on the British Swimming database.

How many personal best times might be set at our December Open Development Meet?

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.

Fifteen To Compete At 2019 English National Masters

We have our greatest ever representation at the English Masters & Seniors Championships being held in Sheffield at the end of the month. Fifteen members are due to compete in over 70 individual events.

Alice Pinney (aged 19), Laura Smith (25), Jodie Armstrong (37), Michelle Neal (39) & Kelly Cooke (42) – all making their National Masters debuts – will be joined by Karen MacKenzie (46) and Sharon Thompson (52).

Their male counterparts are Alex Mason (23), Sam Bradley (25), John O’Rourke (50), Dave Wright (58), Alastair Gibb (59), Graham Powell (63), Malcolm Barton (64) and Colin Mayes (64).

Four others of the Masters’ squad achieved qualifying times in their respective five year age groups but for various reasons will not be participating.

The strong presence in Sheffield is testimony to the many voluntary hours given to the Masters’ squad by coach Pauline Harrington, assisted by Jane Cattle.