Forest Of Bere Open Meet Report
17 Mar 2020
The annual Forest Of Bere Open Meet, run jointly by Winchester City Penguins and Havant and Waterlooville SC, took place in Waterlooville last weekend. The meet itself was a quiet event with spectators thin on the ground due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Despite the small attendance, eighteen of our performance swimmers took part with the target of achieving qualification times for the Regional Championships. Sadly, those Regional Championships have since been cancelled, however the personal bests set and medals won by our swimmers do provide some consolation.
In the youngest age group of 10/11 year olds, Ethan was our only competitor and he did magnificently to win the full suite of medals with gold in 200m freestyle, silvers in 50m freestyle and 50m backstroke and a bronze in 100m backstroke. He also took 4th place in 100m freestyle. All Ethan's races were either new PBs or within a fraction of a second of his existing PBs, a great achievement.
In the 12/13 years age group, Phoebe dominated the girls events, winning five golds (100m and 200m free, 50m and 100m fly, 200m IM), one silver (200m back) and one bronze medal (50m free). For the boys, Nathan did superbly to take 5 seconds off his PB and achieve his first sub-5-minute time for 400m freestyle, winning the silver medal in 4:59.01. He also won a silver for 50m fly and had 4th place finishes in 50m and 100m freestyle. Ronan also swam superbly to set 4 new PBs from 4 races, the highlight being his 50m breaststroke where he just missed the bronze medal by a tenth and took 3 seconds off his PB. Adam, having set several new PBs at the Hart meet the previous week, did well to take 5th, 6th and 7th place in his events.
We had slightly larger representation in the 14/15 years age group, particularly from our girls. First up was Verity, whose great form at the end of 2019 meant she broken her freestyle PB at every distance from 50m to 1500m in the space of two months. She was a little off those PBs this time around, however did achieve 4th and 6th place finishes in 400m freestyle and 200m backstroke. Ellena swam well to win gold in 100m backstroke and took silvers in 200m backstroke and 50m backstroke. She also broke her 50m fly PB for the second time this month, taking 5th place. Maisie had a great swim in her 50m freestyle, taking a second off her PB, and also in her 200m breaststroke in which she took 4 seconds off her PB and took 4th place. Rhyseren, despite only attending for one session, won a silver (200m fly) and three bronzes (100m free, 400m free, 200m IM), with her 400m freestyle particularly impressive - a 4 second PB with a time of 4:52.02. For the boys, Tristan targeted the butterfly events, taking gold in 200m fly, silver in 100m fly and 4th place in 50m fly, and Alex was a fraction off his PBs but had good 4th and 5th places in the 200m IM and 100m freestyle respectively.
In the 16 years and over age group, all seven of our competitors won medals. Molly had a clean sweep, winning gold in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke events and also won bronze for 50m freestyle. She was chased home in the 100m breaststroke by Sophie, who dipped under 1:20 to take silver with a time of 1:19.52, an excellent new PB. Sophie also won silver in 200m IM and bronzes in 50m and 200m breaststroke. Emily took silver in the 400m IM and bronze in the 200m IM, and also took bronze in the 400m freestyle with another strong sub-5-minute swim. Victoria had a great swim in the 50m backstroke to win silver and swam particularly strongly in the 200m backstroke to narrowly miss her PB and take 7th place. In the boys events, George also had a golden clean sweep, this time in the butterfly events, and he also won gold in the 100m freestyle and silver in the 200m freestyle with a great PB of 2:00.79, edging closer to that 2-minute barrier. Felix had an excellent 200m IM, smashing 3 seconds off his PB and taking gold and also won a trio of silvers in 200m back, 50m back and 100m fly. Having recently dipped under 1:10 for the first time, Mukund was just a fraction away from repeating the achievement, taking silver in 100m breaststroke in 1:10.03. He also had a good 50m freestyle, taking silver and acheived 4th place finishes in 100m freestyle and 50m fly.
Full results can be found on the Swim Results website.