SWIMMING: Four Rugby swimmers help Warwickshire retain Midlands Inter-Counties title

Rugby Swimming Club
Rachel Lloyd, Simon Rigg, Ross Turner and Barry DaviesRachel Lloyd, Simon Rigg, Ross Turner and Barry Davies
Rachel Lloyd, Simon Rigg, Ross Turner and Barry Davies

Four Rugby Masters swimmers, Barry Davies, Rachel Lloyd, Ross Turner and Simon Rigg, helped Warwickshire to retain the Midands’ Inter-Counties title. The team won nearly 50 out of the 68 events as they romped to victory gaining over 500 points ahead of Nottinghamshire with just under 400, and Leicester with 350. The team, as ever, led by the inimitable Trevor Clark, simply were just too good for the opposition, but the National title depends on the other regions, and the relative times.

Barry was up first in a freestyle relay, which led to one of the highlights of the afternoon, as he and the Notts’ swimmers started within a few hundredths of each other and were neck and neck the whole way, and finished 0.02 apart, both clocked sub 35 seconds for 50m free, quite extraordinary when you consider both are in their 70s.

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Another highlight came a couple of races later, as Neil Smith, 40, from Kenilworth, went into the last leg of the 140+ freestyle relay over 2 seconds down in 4th. He had caught the opposition by the turn, and went onto win by over 2 clear seconds, clocking a sub 24 in the process.

Rachel won very valuable points across all of her races, swimming, back, breast and free, in both the individuals and relays. She was unlucky to be pipped by 0,03 of a second in her individual breaststroke, but gained revenge in the back, plus helped several relays to victory.

Ross also swam a similar variety of events, and relays, being the youngster in one and the elder statesmen in others. Again just beaten in his breaststroke, by 0.01 of a second, but he was in at least four winning relay teams, where he just about swam every stroke in every position at least once.

Simon swam the free all in relays. All three were in sub 27 seconds, which is showing decent return to form at last.

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In one event he was distinctly the experience in the youth and experience combo, as the team was led off by 18-year-old Dan Moore from Coventry, who set a Midlands record on the first leg on the back in the medley relay, in the process.

One of the other members of the team, was heard to comment, “I have trunks older then him” which just shows the real team spirit in which this very keenly fought event is raced.

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