SHARKS ON FIRE AT SHEFFIELD WITH NQT'S AND COUNTY RECORDS
Tigershark's 13 year old Stacey Wood along with sister Hayley, Jazmin Carlin and Grant Turner produced some superb swims last weekend at Ponds Forge Sheffield in the Gateshead & Whickham Open Meet.
Stacey was the first Tigershark to compete and she set the standard for the 2 days with a Silver medal performance in the 200m butterfly. A personal best (PB) time of 2 minutes 29.10 seconds was both a National Qualifying Time (NQT) and over a second inside the qualification time for the European Junior Championships trials that will be held in March. Wood became the third Tigershark to qualify for the trials along with Carlin and Turner.
Turner and Carlin produced their best swims of the weekend in the 100 and 200 metres freestyle respectively, both breaking Wiltshire County Records. Turner's time of 54.02 seconds broke the Junior Record, which had been held since 1994 by Bradford On Avon's Gavin Kington, by 0.5 of a second. Turner also showed great early season speed to win Gold in the 50m freestyle with an impressive swim and good time of 25.21.
Carlin was at her competitive best in the 200m freestyle where once again she came up against Lincoln Vulcan's Jordon Tomlinson, one of the top 14 year olds in Europe. Carlin attacked the race from the start and her 100 metres split time of 62 seconds was inside the NQT for14 years olds. Her 200m time of 2minutes 7.59 meant that she won the Silver medal and was only 100 th 's of a second behind Tomlinson. It was also a PB by 1 second lowering her own Junior and Senior County Records which she set at the end of November, and was 7 seconds inside the qualifying time for the European Juniors. Carlin also won Bronze in the 400 metre freestyle.
Hayley Wood was the other Tigershark to swim well at Sheffield. Going for a NQT in the 400m freestyle Wood went out in 2.15.00. Her final time of 4 minutes 38 was just outside the NQT by 1.6 seconds, but she stands a great chance of achieving this over the next 4 months of County and District competition.
