Masters come of age at Scottish Nationals
21 Apr 2019
Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Anthony Ervin, Martina Navratilova – all athletes able to perform at their peak capacity after their supposed biological peak had been and gone.
You can now add our Masters swimmers to this list!
The Scottish Masters National Championships held at the Edinburgh commonwealth pool. A superb facility, fitting for the swimming onslaught our Masters were about to unleash.
Damien Hall, John North, Jim Carr, Nick Valentine and Ross Anderson have been training hard with this event in mind over the last few months. It’s a marked step up from previous years to send such a strong squad to a national event.
Firstly, the bad news, during the first session on Good Friday, Nick V was racing the 400IM. While making his first turn on the backstroke leg Nick felt his back go with a sudden and acute pain which prevented him continuing the race. A sad site on his Tynemouth Individual debut. Nick, truly one of the leading Masters swimmer in the country has been a superb addition to group, we are delighted to have him at Tynemouth and wish him a speedy recovery.
Over to the other lads!
John, Damien and Jim all taking on the 50 Fly. PB’s all-round with the slight drop from Jim needed for him to pick up a Gold! The first medal of the weekend.
Next up was 100 Breastroke for Damo, an excellent performance lowering his own 40-44 club record resulting in a Silver!
John and Jim followed up with times that all but watched their previous best efforts in the 100 free and spawned another Gold for Jim to end Fridays swimming.
Saturday morning, Damo back in action in the 100IM with a solid swim. He followed that up during the morning session with a barn-storming 200 Breastroke. A fantastic last 50 driving it home to score a very impressive Gold!!
Damien in Lane 5
John, who was taking on 6 swims throughout the 2 days had 200 Free where his gala really caught fire, dropping his best time by 2.3 seconds and powering home on the back end. A nicely done 50 Backstroke rounded off his mornings work.
Jim who was racing 100 Fly during the session scored his fastest time for 2 years which was good enough to take home his 3rdGold of the championships.
A much-deserved lunch break with high class coffee and cake, then on to the last session where they were joined by Ross Anderson.
Ross was pumped and ready for action having followed the earlier success of the team.
First up in the session though, that man John North in the 400 Free. Arguably the swim of the championships as he raced it to perfection, benefited from good pacing dropping his previous best time by 15.7 seconds! Boom!
John Lane 5, closing out his 400m
Next up Ross and Damo – 50 Breast. Ross smashed out a great swim, lowering his previous best as a Master by half a second. Damo rounded his championships off with a strong effort, shaving 0.2 off his best, taking a silver medal in the process. With 2 silvers and 1 gold for Damien, he could now put his feet up and watch the other three in the 50 Free.
Ross in Lane 4
John, Ross, Jim, 2 lengths of the pool, the sounds of self-abusive, painful slapping fills the air…..but not from our trio. They were focused and ready for action and the results demonstrated thus:
John going sub 30 for the first time, Ross going millimetres to a sub 29.
Jim was last up and wanted to round off these championships the way it deserved! Having plateaued on 25.2 for 2 years, Jim manged to see a 24 on the results next to his name for the first time in his life and made it 4 out of 4 in collecting another Gold medal.
Jim in Lane 5.
For all 4 gentlemen, an astonishing performance on the big stage but most importantly they had a great time, supported each other and put Tynemouth Masters on the map.
You can see all the swims from the guys on the masters YouTube channel playlist - Scottish Masters Nationals 2019
We wish Nick V all the best with the recovery and we hope to see more Masters getting involved in the months and years to come. Tynemouth is place to be!
