Pioneer 79 Swimmers, Niamh Robinson and Ben Martin, both 16 years of age, competed in Glasgow recently at the British Championships. This event was being used as a selection event for numerous competitions including the Olympic Games to be held in Rio this summer, the European Championships in London and also the European Junior Championships to be held in Hungary. Therefore, the top swimmers in the UK were at this event, including world record holder Adam Peaty, Hannah Miley, Siobhan Marie O’Connor, Jazz Carlin and Ben Proud. However, for the two Pioneer 79 swimmers, their sights were firmly set on achieving qualifying times and perhaps catching the eye of the selectors for the chance of being selected to compete in the European Junior Championships.

Heats were run in the morning sessions, with finals taking place in the evening. Each event had 3 separate finals, the ‘A’ Final – this was for the fastest 8 swimmers overall, regardless of age in the heats. The next was the ‘Target Tokyo’ Final, this final was for swimmers born 1997-2000 so the fastest 8 swimmers who fell into these years of birth competed in this final. The last was the ‘Junior’ Final, this final was for swimmers born 1999-2002, so the remaining 8 fastest who fall into these years of birth competed in this final.

During the course of this season, Niamh had achieved 5 qualifying times and following discussions between herself and Head Coach, Mike Wilson, it was decided that she would swim all 5 events. Niamh’s first event was the 400m individual Medley. In her heat, she achieved a marginal pb time of 4.54.01, successfully qualifying her for the Target Tokyo final. In the final, she finished in a slightly slower time of 4.57.66 placing her 4th. The next day, Niamh competed in the 200m Breaststroke, her heat time of 2.34.78 was slightly slower than her pb, however it was good enough to enable her to compete in the Junior Final later that evening. In her final, Niamh finished in a faster time of 2.33.90, finishing 4th.

The next event was the 200m Individual Medley, in her heat, Niamh’s time of 2.18.14 qualified her comfortably for the Target Tokyo Final. She returned to the pool in the evening and her final time of 2.18.33 placed her 5th. The last day was Niamh’s busiest, having entered both the 100m Breaststroke and the 100m Butterfly, it wasn’t anticipated the events would be quite so close together, however, Niamh decided that she would be concentrating on the 100m Breaststroke event. Her heat time of 1.11.15 qualified her for the Target Tokyo Final, but then, less than 20 minutes later without even having the chance to swim down, she found herself behind the blocks again ready to swim the 100m Butterfly. Niamh’s time of 1.02.74 was less than half a second slower than her pb time and she was shocked to find out that she was also fast enough to qualify for the Junior Final later that day. Niamh and her coach decided that she would swim in both finals, but she should concentrate on the Breaststroke and then to give whatever she had left in the Butterfly final. Although Niamh’s times were both slightly slower than her heat times, 1.11.68 in the 100m Breaststroke and 1.02.86 in the 100m Butterfly, she finished 7th and 6th respectively in each final.

Although Niamh was disappointed overall with her performances at the British Championships, she was comforted with the fact that her times were not too far off her pb’s, and also that she had entered 5 events and qualified for 5 finals which was a great achievement in itself. Unfortunately, Niamh was not selected to compete at the European Junior Championships; however, her ability to qualify for so many events during the course of the week was a fabulous achievement.

Ben Martin achieved a qualifying time for the 50m Freestyle event, probably one of the most difficult events to achieve a time for! His event wasn’t until the 5th day, so he and his family travelled to Glasgow on the 3rd day to allow him time to have a few training sessions in the pool in order to prepare. Ben entered the event with a time of 24.26, in his heat he had a fantastic swim, smashing his qualifying time by 0.25 to finish 40th overall in 24.01, unfortunately Ben just missed out on the Junior Final by 0.14 of a second. He was disappointed to have been so close to reaching the final, but was pleased with the fact he had managed to set himself a new personal best time at such a prestigious event.

The support back home for both Pioneer 79 swimmers was phenomenal; training sessions were paused whilst finals were being swum, club swimmers watching the action on the live streams on tablets, phones and laptops. Both swimmers where inundated with messages of support through personal texts, emails and social media. The club is extremely proud of the achievements of all our swimmers, and to have swimmers competing at this level, within grasp of competing for Team GB is incredible. We would like to congratulate both Niamh and Ben on their achievements and wish both them and all other swimmers at Pioneer 79 all the very best in their quest to compete at the British Summer National Championships which will take place in July/August this year.