The annual Masters Swimming NSW Long Course Championships were held at SOPAC on the weekend of the 17th and 18th March. This was a very busy weekend for Sydney Olympic Park as there were concerts by Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars, the Australian Junior Athletics Championships, the NSW Diving Championships and of course the NSW Masters Swim.
The NSW Swim saw 295 swimmers competing from 22 Sydney clubs, 16 country clubs, two interstate clubs and there was one visitor from the USA. Male swimmers slightly outnumbered the female with 154 to 141. Three of the males were our president John Collis, Paul Maggs and Gary Stutsel all of whom competed for Tuggeranong Vikings. Interestingly the Vikings had their smallest team for years with our three men and six of their ladies making a total of nine.
Despite the small numbers the Vikings Team finished 9th overall from 41 clubs and was 3rd in the Average Points per swimmer trophy. We were the top scoring country club. In the Mixed Relays (two females plus two males) John and Gary teamed with Katrina Burgess and Caroline Makin to swim two second places. In the medley event, where John swam the breaststroke leg and Gary the freestyle we were 3 seconds behind North Sydney while in the freestyle relay Ryde finished 4 seconds in front of us.
Meantime Ross Burden was competing in the Masters section of the NSW Diving Championships in the SOPAC diving pool, where the MSNSW Relay Meet is held. Ross finished with a 2nd place in the 1m springboard event and 2nd place in the 3m event. (Photos are courtesy of Sean Leydon, who is the son of a Tuggeranong Vikings swimmer).
Our three boys were happy with their individual performances (maximum of five swims allowed) as is shown in their results below. Paul took 4 seconds off both of his times from last month and scored 13 points to finish 8th of 10 swimmers, John scored 39 points which gave him 6th of 19 and Gary 44 points which was 3rd of 10. The complete results are on the MSNSW website at http://mastersswimmingnsw.org.au/Competition/Results/MSNSW-Swim-Meet-Results.
2018 MSNSW Long Course Championships |
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| Men | |||||
| Age Group | Name | Event | Time | Event place | NSW Ranking for 2018 ytd |
| 65-69 | |||||
| John Collis | 50m Backstroke | 45.02 | 3 | 4 | |
| 50m Breaststroke | 41.78 | 2 | 4 | ||
| 100m Breaststroke | 1:38.49 | 3 | 5 | ||
| 200m Breaststroke | 3:42.20 | 3 | 3 | ||
| 50m Butterfly | 49.08 | 5 | 9 | ||
| 75-79 | |||||
| Paul Maggs | 50m Freestyle | 42.88 | 4 | 10 | |
| 100m Freestyle | 1:51.37 | 5 | 10 | ||
| Gary Stutsel | 50m Freestyle | 35.90 | 1 | 1 | |
| 100m Freestyle | 1:25.49 | 3 | 3 | ||
| 100m Backstroke | 1:47.97 | 4 | 4 | ||
| 50m Butterfly | 50.78 | 2 | 2 | ||
| 100m Butterfly | 2:35.51 | 1 | 1 | ||