News May 2012
Keep up to date with what's happening at Dartes and performance swimming in Doncaster. This page records the news as it happens -- history in the making!
The Stories behind the Headlines
3 out of 5 ain't bad for Youth Nationals!
9 May: We weren't expecting confirmation quite so quickly, but earlier today we were sent the list of 40 teams who have qualified for Youth Nationals in each event. That'll be 4 heats on the day of 4x100m Freestyle, 4x200m Freestyle, and 4x100m Medley for boys and girls.
We had 5 strong chances of qualifying. The girls were entered in all 3 events, the boys just the pair of 4x100m. Records are a little bit fuzzy, but we don't think we've had more than a single team per year at Nationals since 1996, and we're pretty sure we haven't had 5 in total over all that time.
Our wildest dreams didn't quite come true, we didn't get all 5.
We did however get 3, and let's not forget this is only Youth Championships, Age-Group qualifying comes later!
So who can we look forward to watching in the summer?
Three quarters of the boys team that reached the final in 2009 are heading back for more. Max Litchfield (Spa), Richard Lee (Spa), and Elliot Trofimowicz (Spa) will be joined by Jamie Clarke (Arm) - we promise to get a team photo with Jamie in it soon. That adds Richard and Elliot to the National Squad.
The girls 4x200m Freestyle team from 2010 also heads back in that same event. You can even watch their 2010 performance on Dartes TV. Caitlin Dixon (Arm), Shannon Dodson (Adw), and Jessica Gillatt (SAS) are already in the National Squad, but they'll be joined by Heidi Smith (Arm) who qualified for 200m Backstroke in 2010. They are also 2nd reserve for the 4x100m Freestyle so have a slim chance of adding another event in that.
That makes 13 heading off to Nationals in one form or another, which is the same as 2009 and 2010. We might still be 1 or 2 short on individual qualifiers, but we have 2 extra teams, and the most events qualified for (45 compared to 43 in 2010), and we still have another month of qualifying left to go. Our age-groupers have a fast short course meet this weekend and two weekends of NER Championships left in which to add themselves to the list.
All to swim for then.
2012 National Squad ...
Guess Who, with a European Twist
9 May: Europe's governing body for swimming, the LEN, has a new website and it has a very definite South Yorkshire flavour about it.
The action photos are mostly the work of Sheffield's Simon Wright, the man behind GBSwimStars. As you'd expect, City of Sheffield feature quite prominently, but he's been kind enough to include a couple of the National Squad shots he took at Adwick way back in 2009.
This one takes pride of place as the big banner advert for Euro Juniors in July where Max Litchfield (Spa) will be competing, but a similar one also featured in a recruitment poster Simon kindly threw together for us. Your challenge: who is it launching from the blocks wearing a 2009 National Squad cap? Hint: he also featured on the British Swimming website design too, albeit a different photo.
He's not alone though. Check out the Open Water tab at the bottom of the page. That's another of our 2009 shots. We had to go searching through the back catalogue of photos Simon took that day to be certain she was one of ours, but one of ours she most certainly is (or was). In true 'Guess Who' fashion, we're not going to tell you who they are, you have to guess.
As always a big thank you to Simon for including our photos in his work. Hopefully we can get him down to Adwick again sometime for a refresh.
Big Drops on 2x800m
8 May:
With a week to go before our trip to Middlesbrough, we put Phase 4 through another 2x800m challenge.
We had some pretty big time drops and a shuffling of the overall rankings.
The new squad record holder is
Katie Pendlebury (Ros)
after allowing
Robert Kirk (Spa)
to set the pace throughout and sneaking alongside in the final few metres.
Not the honourable way to do it, but drafting behind someone does save energy in swimming in a similar way to cycling - just not quite as much.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see who breaks 10:30 first!
Drafting, slipstreaming, call it what you will, it's definitely easier swimming close behind someone than being out front setting the pace. Which is why everyone bunches up, and the less experienced swimmers in lane 1 overtake so frequently. When behind someone, getting a small drag off their slipstream, it's easy to keep up. In cycling they say slipstreaming saves around 20% of your energy, it's not quite that much in swimming, but it's still significant.
Imagine the extra effort involved in first of all overtaking, and then secondly staying in front.
It feels easy before you start.
Adrenaline will get you past.
But then what?
Suddenly you have to work 20% harder just to maintain your original pace.
The result, more often than not, is whoever you overtook will soon go flying past you once again, and the entire cycle is set to repeat itself until one of you is too exhausted to try.
So think before you overtake, and once you decide to go be determined to keep the pace up for a few more lengths and stay ahead.
If you've tried on previous lengths and not been able to maintain it, probably best to stay put.
So who were the big movers this time. The obvious two are Eleanor Vodden (Min) and Matthew Jubb (Adw). Both jumping up in to the all-time top 8. It could well be the top lane for them next time. We had plenty of first-timers in the mix this time too. As ever, it's important for the newbies to understand how quickly their times will improve. What you did this time, is merely a starting point. Next time you could easily knock off 30sec to a full minute. Just have the confidence to attack it hard from the start and see what happens.
| Pos | Name | Date | 400m | 800m | 400m | 800m | Avg | All Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Katie Pendlebury | 8 May 2012 | 4:59 | 10:30 | 5:10 | 10:47 | 10:38 | 1 (1) |
| 2 | Robert Kirk | 8 May 2012 | 5:03 | 10:33 | 5:13 | 10:51 | 10:42 | 2 (2) |
| 3 | Mathew Jubb | 8 May 2012 | 5:27 | 11:03 | 5:30 | 11:40 | 11:21 | 5 (5) |
| 4 | Eleanor Vodden | 8 May 2012 | 5:22 | 11:16 | 11:33 | 11:24 | 7 (7) | |
| 5 | Harry Butterworth | 8 May 2012 | 5:37 | 11:28 | 5:25 | 11:24 | 11:26 | 8 (8) |
| 6 | Amber Hardy | 8 May 2012 | 5:35 | 11:30 | 5:28 | 11:28 | 11:29 | 9 (9) |
| 7 | Laura Brookes | 8 May 2012 | 5:25 | 11:27 | 5:31 | 11:32 | 11:29 | 10 (10) |
| 8 | Rianna Hill | 8 May 2012 | 5:33 | 11:42 | 11:59 | 11:50 | 13 (13) | |
| 9 | Chloe Key | 8 May 2012 | 5:40 | 11:52 | 5:44 | 12:11 | 12:01 | 15 (15) |
| 10 | Grace Litchfield | 8 May 2012 | 5:38 | 11:55 | 5:50 | 12:09 | 12:02 | 16 (17) |
| 11 | Rebecca Christmas | 8 May 2012 | 6:07 | 12:02 | 12:09 | 12:05 | 21 (21) | |
| 12 | Chantelle Waugh | 8 May 2012 | 5:50 | 12:05 | 12:17 | 12:11 | 22 (22) | |
| 13 | Georgia Whetton | 8 May 2012 | 5:49 | 12:20 | 12:03 | 12:11 | 23 (23) | |
| 14 | Molly Butterworth | 8 May 2012 | 6:00 | 12:14 | 12:28 | 12:21 | 24 (24) | |
| 15 | Lucy Clarke | 8 May 2012 | 5:56 | 12:17 | 12:29 | 12:23 | 25 (25) | |
| 16 | Joseph Gatus | 8 May 2012 | 5:55 | 12:12 | 12:39 | 12:25 | 26 (26) | |
| 17 | Thomas Wilson | 8 May 2012 | 5:42 | 12:23 | 5:55 | 12:40 | 12:31 | 28 (28) |
| 18 | Lily Metcalfe | 8 May 2012 | 6:15 | 12:01 | 6:21 | 13:39 | 12:50 | 31 (18) |
| 19 | Olivia Drury | 8 May 2012 | 5:55 | 12:39 | 6:06 | 13:02 | 12:50 | 31 (31) |
| 20 | Iona Holdsworth | 8 May 2012 | 6:02 | 12:54 | 6:39 | 12:48 | 12:51 | 32 (32) |
| 21 | Lauren Heywood | 8 May 2012 | 6:12 | 13:09 | 6:07 | 12:47 | 12:58 | 33 (29) |
| 22 | Tilly Arrand | 8 May 2012 | 6:08 | 12:57 | 6:26 | 13:18 | 13:07 | 34 (34) |
| 23 | Robbie Casson | 8 May 2012 | 6:16 | 13:22 | 6:33 | 13:30 | 13:26 | 38 (38) |
| 24 | Taylor Hardy | 8 May 2012 | 6:27 | 14:54 | 6:27 | 13:07 | 14:00 | 40 (40) |
| 25 | Lauren Jarvis | 8 May 2012 | 5:50 | 12:20 | ||||
More NQT and Double Team Champions at Senior/Youth NERs
6 May: Did anyone notice how quiet it was on Friday evening and Saturday morning at training?
For those of you who didn't notice it was NER weekend for our youth/senior athletes at Dartes. This event took place at the Sunderland Aquatics Centre and by all accounts our athletes were focused and up for some fast racing.
The ultimate Dartes machine Max Litchfield (Spa) added another NQT giving him a whopping 12 now in total. The guy is not only a lovely person and an outstanding role model to his peers, but a total legend to boot improving on 4 of his own club records on the way to a 4 Gold, 2 Silver medal haul out of his 6 events!
Also on fire this weekend was Caitlin Dixon (Arm), adding 3 more NQTs to her collection giving her 5 in total. Back in 2010, her first time on the National Squad, she qualified for just the 200m Butterfly; last year she switched to Freestyle and qualified for 200m and 800m; so this year is turning in to quite a leap forward for her.
This weekend she added the 100m Butterfly and both Medleys - with 2 out of the 3 Animal Squad events in her summer programme, the Crazy Cat certainly isn't one to take the easy route to Nationals.
Her 200m IM was so fast it earned her a Gold (Youth) and a Silver (Senior) in the same event!
And off the back of all that super fast racing she set 3 more Dartes Age-Group Records in her first event as a 15 year old!
The 15 year female 200m IM record had stood since 1995 and was owned by the girl at the top of the Dartes medal table. Emma Parker (Adw) held it after swimming a 2:34 at North Easterns last century; Caitlin's time this weekend was a whopping 10 seconds faster!
Wowwwwwwwwwwww, Caitlin you rock!
Jessica Gillatt (SAS) was another one of our athletes who had a great weekend of racing; Jess finalled in four of her events and along with Caitlin she too smashed Emma Parker's 200m IM record, slipping beneath it with a time of 2:31.83.
Between these two girls, Sophie Coy (Adw) finds half of her 15 year old records removed from the books too. Both her 50m and 100m Butterfly standards have been lowered. Jess shaved a mere 0.10sec off the 50m record, while Caitlin lowered the 100m time by over 1sec. Caitlin's other record came in the 400m IM along with another National Qualifying Time.
Other athletes who managed to final in some of their swims included Richard Lee (Spa) finishing in 10th place in both 50m and 100m Freestyle; and Heidi Smith (Arm) knocking big 2sec chuncks off 4 of her PBs, and an 8th place finish in the final of the 50m Freestyle.
The boys weren't exactly being quiet either.
This weekend doubled up as National Team qualifying weekend for the Youths, and we had high hopes of qualifying more teams for the summer than we have in the previous 15 years combined (5 team spots were up for grabs).
The girls team just missed out on a National final berth in 2010 while three quarters of the boys team reached the final the year before.
How many could we get qualified for 2012?
It's something of a moving target, there is no set NQT for the teams. You simply have to be in the top so many in the country, and you only really get two opportunities to qualify: the Zonal Meet, and Regional Championships. The boys set themselves up brilliantly this weekend, winning Gold in both the 400m Medley team and the 400m Freestyle team. They have an excellent chance of qualifying for both - we'll have to wait and see what happened around the rest of the country. But well done to National Team veterans Max, Richard Lee (Spa) and Elliot Trofimowicz (Spa), and hopeful first timer on a National Team event Jamie Clarke (Arm).
The girls were up for 3 events, and while they didn't come home with the bling around the boys' necks, our veteran campaigners Heidi, Jess, Caitlin, and Shannon Dodson (Adw) may have just done enough to squeeze in on all 3 - keep your fingers crossed! A pretty good showing, considering 3 of the 4 have only just moved in to Youths, and the 4th will still be competing at Age-Group NERs later in the month!
Thanks as ever to our Head Coach Andy Wallace for taking the journey up to Sunderland and looking after the gang for the weekend, they did you proud!