held on 9th/10th July 2011
BLDSA LLYN TEGID – 52nd Championships
Once again the North Welsh town of Y Bala hosted the gathering of open water swimmers assembled in July to participate in the annual BLDSA Llyn Tegid Championships. As per recent tradition a good gathering of swimmers, friends and officials meet on the Friday evening at the White Lion. For those of you who weren’t there well you missed the enjoyment. Join us next year, you’re all welcome.
So onto Saturday morning with the Gazebo set up, 8:30am sore the first person arriving for registration/entry to the first swim and we were off running the championship. The weather was none typical with an absence of continual rain. The water temperature was pleasant for Bala at or around 16C depending where you took the temperature.
As usual the first race was the combined 1km and 3km race. Amongst the starters were a couple who I was concerned about, Darron Corden and Richard Davidson. Did they know what tactics to use in such a short race? As the pair of them have finish regularly in the leaders of the 2-way race. Back to the race itself, all the swimmers were counted in and aligned for the start. They were off and a fine sight it was in their yellow and green Llyn Tegid caps.
The first swimmer home in the 1km race was Thomas Stokes finishing in 12:11 (wetsuit category) followed shortly behind by Owain Llyr James in 12:24 a couple a very fine swims. In the 3km race Freddie Bassett won the senior gents race in 42:27 with Ciara Murph winning the senior ladies in 48:24. In the junior gents race Toby Harknett won in 42:27 and Hawys Hatley won the junior ladies in 41:49.
Our two-way championship followed, the 34 swimmers leaving the starting line close to 13:00. All swimmers proceeded down the llyn around the turning boat (Thanks Rob once again) to retrace their strokes back to the start. William Bott was the first to appear around the headland which obscures the view from the finish retaining the title a short distance ahead of Chris Malpass, finishing in a time of 2:23:36. In the ladies race we were destined for a new winner as the previous title holder wasn’t swimming and ten minutes behind the gents was Nicola Fraser finishing in a time of 2:33:33
On the Sunday morning there was some light rain to start the day. This year we held a 500m swim as an introduction to open water swimming. We had 12 swimmers taking part. All but two were from New Zealand. What a swim and what a finish. The timekeepers earned their lunch as a large bunch of the swimmers finished almost together, with the winner being Freddie Bassett in a time of 5:31. I must thank Jean Wilkin-Oxley who escorted young Sarah Roberts around the entire course encouraging her all the way around resulting in her finishing her first ever open water swim.
At lunch time we started the one-way race which had an entry of 30 swimmers with 29 swimmers starting. Chris Malpass was the first home winning the senior gents race in 1:03:45, just outside his record time. Next home were a couple of junior gents the winner being Toby Harknett finishing in a time of 1:05:55. Dee Llewellyn won the senior ladies race in 1:08:38 and the winner of the junior ladies race was Katie Mould in 1:18:24. All swimmers finished within 2.5 hours so the presentation was held nice and early this year.
Now I come to the important bit of thanking all those who helped. Each year I’m blessed by a great group of helpers who turn up and just proceed to do what is needed, so I basically turn up and ‘swan around’. Therefore I must thank you all for your efforts.
Over the past few years that I have been secretary the swim has grown and is now 2.6 times bigger. Saturday mornings have become extremely busy and difficult to manage. I am always keen to keep the swim to the published time schedule where ever possible, which presented the swim as being professionally run. This year it was difficult to do this due to the ‘on the day entries’ which is an unknown and difficult to process. This resulted in the 1km & 3km briefing being delay and a certain swimmer taking exception to this and being quite unpleasant to myself. As a result of this unmanageable entity I have decided that next season there will be no ‘on the day’ entries. Further more the administration of the swim is now becoming a major job, on top of work, family and other BLDSA commitments. Processing paper entries, the associated monies is a task that takes a substantial time. Therefore the swim next year will be ‘ON-LINE’ entry only, in keeping with most major sporting events across the country.
Have a great winters training and see you next year.
Andy Wright, Swim Secretary
To see Photographs of the event click on the PHOTOS button
