The first event in the Cumbria Swimming 2024 Age Groups and County Championships saw over 300 swimmers aged 10 to 42 competing head-to-head over two days at Workington Leisure Centre.
This was the first of two weekends where swimmers from the county’s eight clubs compete at distances ranging from 50m to 1500m. Overall entries this year are up a healthy 20% over the previous two years with nearly 2,500 individual and team entries for the competition.
The Ladies events have so far been dominated by Cockermouth’s Golden Girl 16-year-old Amber Rigg who landed ten senior individual titles on the first weekend. Amber was pushed hard by team mate Olivia O’Mahoney winner in the 400 Freestyle, Lily Smith (Ulverston) 200 Fly and Scarlett Robinson (Copeland) who all made multiple finals.
In the Men’s events it was a much more closely fought affair on the opening weekend with Cockermouth’s Max Henderson and Jackson Jardine being pushed hard by Ethan Allpress (Ulverston) and Elliot Routledge (Workington).
Jackson, Ethan, Elliot along with Finley Quayle (Copeland) Oliver Dyson (Cockermouth) and Lennon Bell (Kendal) all won senior county titles. Max, Oliver, and Oscar Hodgson (all Cockermouth) won junior titles.
In the Men’s Blue-Ribbon Event the 100 Freestyle for the 100-year-old Gilbert Rollo Cup (first presented in 1924) Elliot rolled back the years to show the rest of the field how its done winning in 55.34 seconds with all eight-finalist swimming sub one minutes for four lengths of the pool.
The ladies’ event will be held during the second week-end.
In the Multi Classification Para Swimming discipline Cockermouth’s Brooklyn Hale had a fab weekend warming up for the forthcoming CITI World Series-British Swimming Winter meeting in Aberdeen with numerous personal bests and multiple medals.
As well as swimmers competing individually at the Championship the event also includes team relays which will be held this weekend.
All clubs are fielding strong teams for the final session (Sunday afternoon) with a bumper crowd expected to cheer them on.
The Age Group and County Championship events count towards the Tommy Hatch and Cumbria Trophies which are presented to the best club-based point collected from the best individual swims in the age categories and championship events. Cockermouth are currently leading in both competitions.
