The best swimmers in Australia embark on NSW Open Championships in preparation for Olympic Trial in June.
The event provides great racing opportunities for swimmers to work on their improvements in the racing environment.
Our Abbotsleigh team had a blend of experience and freshness, with Shaun Champion sand Zac Attard refining their craft and our Age Nationals hopefuls raising to the high performance environment.
For some swimmers, this was the first exposure the best swimmers in the world. They warmed up with them, nearly got swam over and enjoyed the excitement of sharing pool deck and lanes many of their heroes.
This was a great chance to get a taste of what National championships is like. It is busy, warm up is chaos and you have to handle all of these elements to prepare for the actual racing.
With 3 weeks to go to Age Nationals swimmers, our 10 swimmers made the most of the race practice bringing home many learnings.
Shaun Champion showed his intent performing his best race skills against his peers. Shaun placed 2nd in the 100m butterfly in 51.97 seconds and 3rd in the 50m butterfly in 23.79, both season best times. Shaun will head to Open Nationals with Zac to continue his journey on the path towards the Olympic Trials in June.
It was the final race of the meet where our values shone brightest. Given a challenge to qualify a complete relay team for Age nationals Syesha Anthony, Grace Black, Audrey Jackson and Piper Marinas jumped at the prospect. Their challenge was to improve from their December State Championship effort of 4 minutes 10 seconds. With the qualifying time being 4.07, it needed to be a whole team effort to achieve this outcome.
At 8:35pm on Sunday night our girls swam their hearts out (after returning from camp on Friday), they all swam their personal best efforts, executing their race plans and swimming for each other. They qualified with a time of 4:06.9! a Massive four second improvement. It is incredible what a team can achieve.
Congratulations to our NSW Open Swimmers.