Cork Masters Swim Club aces bag medal impressive haul in Sheffield

A TEAM of four swimmers from Cork Masters Swim Club recently attended the UK Masters Swim Championships at the International Ponds Forge pool in Sheffield taking on the best of British swimmers at the event.

This is an annual event attended by the best of British Masters swimmers.

In Masters Swimming, you compete against similar ages grouped by five years. The four CMSC swimmers were Chris Kelleher (35-39), Paul Laffin (30-34), Gavin O’Brien (25-29) and Jerry O’Riordan (45-49).

The team won six medals and swam 10 personal bests with standout performances in particular by Laffin and Chris Kelleher. It is rare for an Irish swimmer to win an event in the UK, so Laffan’s achievement of not only winning his two events, the 50m and 100m freestyle event but in breaking the British record for the 50m event for the age group was exceptional. Being Irish he cannot claim the record, unfortunately, nevertheless an outstanding achievement for an Irish swimmer.

Chris Kelleher also won gold in a brilliantly paced 200 breaststroke with a lifetime best time and very close to the Irish record.

Kelleher won medals in his three breaststroke races taking bronze in his 50m and 100m events as well another outstanding achievement for an Irish swimmer. Laffin also took a silver in the 50m butterfly event.

QUALITY

Gavin and Jerry swam personal bests in their events against high-quality opposition with Jerry taking fourth place in the 50m freestyle and fifth in the 100m freestyle. Gavin’s PBs were in the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle.

It should be noted that most of the CMSC training is in the Leisureworld 25m pools here in Cork as we have no 50m pool with occasional sessions arranged by the club in Limerick so all these swims are superb as they were all in a 50m international pool.

Next up for CMSC will be to send a team to the European Masters Games in Tampere Finland in late June a huge multi-sport event that includes swimming taking place over six days when close to 5,000 athletes will attend over.

The CMSC team comprises Laffin, Chris Kelleher, Jerry O’Riordan, Catherine Costigan, Elaine Whyte and Aoife Sexton. Tampere is Finland’s third largest city of similar size to Cork City, so an exciting experience in the Nordic regions awaits the team.

Cork Masters SC was founded in 1979 and has competed abroad since 1985. In recent years an influx of new swimmers has re-generated the club and its success as typified by this event.

The club members, now standing at over 70, also promote and take part in open water swimming in the Cork region.