Kristina Neves was in top form at the K2 pool in Crawley. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0584419)
KRISTINA NEVES defended her south-east title at the regional long-course Bagcats championships in Crawley’s K2 Olympic pool.
Held over two weekends, Neves was one of the three juniors from the Guernsey Swimm-ing Club to take part.
She held on to her crown by finishing first in the girls’ 11-year-old age-group with an impressive Bagcats total of 2,848 points which was more than 300 ahead of second- place Emma Day of Guildford and third Alice Lim of Rushmore Royals.
These two swimmers will be among some of Neves’ opposition when she competes in the National Champion-ships next month. ‘She did very well,’ said her father Bruno who was at the K2. She had nine personal bests and some very, very good times. She really swam well.
‘It was a very hard championships as it was over two weekends. It was hard on the children.
‘There was a lot of waiting around.’
Neves swam in 13 events where she had 10 gold medals, one silver, one bronze and one fifth place.
She also achieved nine personal best times and broke three of her own records.
She also came close to taking the 200m butterfly record, just missing out by half-a-second.
One of her strongest swims was the 200m freestyle where in the heats she beat her own record and then went on to smash it again in the final.
Nicole Hewlett swum in five events in the under-12 age group where she achieved personal best times in all her swims, finishing 10th overall in the Bagcats points.
In the 100m and 200m breaststroke she produced a very gutsy performance, finishing an agonising three-quarters-of-a-second outside the national qualifying time in both events.
Her brother, James, competing in a strong U13 age group, also swam in five events where he achieved three personal best times, one in the 400m freestyle and two in the 1500m and 800m.
Beau Sejour Barracudas also produced some good swims.
Their outstanding performance came from Miles Munro, 11, who not only set a new gala record in the 100m freestyle with his personal best time of 1-03.19 but collected a massive 547 Bagcats points for this swim.
Reaching the final in the 200m freestyle and 200m individual medley, he placed second in both with massive personal best times of 2-20.59 and 2-46.49 respectively.
With tough opposition coming from many top UK clubs, Munro’s final points tally of 1,813 earned him third place in the Bagcats awards scheme.
Oliver Nightingale, Luke Winberg and Lotte Parfit also produced commendable performances in their age groups with Winberg and Parfit reaching the final of the 200m individual medley placing fifth and fourth in times of 2-39.03 and 2-33.20 respectively.
A butterfly specialist, Winberg also produced excellent performances to come fifth in the 100m and fourth in the 200m.
Parfit’s 400m individual medley time of 5-26.61 was just shy of the national qualifying time.
The youngest member of the team, 10-year-old Harry Parfit, gained valuable experience competing, with his best performance coming in the 200m backstroke when his time of 2-52.84 placed him fourth in his age group.
In the 12-year-old boys’ Bagcats category, Oliver Nightingale placed ninth and Winberg 11th.
Lotte and Harry Parfit were unable to complete a full Bagcats programme, losing out on valuable points, finishing 37th and 24th respectively.
Article posted on 25th June, 2008 - 2.29pm
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