The 2017 Club Championship events include the Mile open water in July and nine pool events which were held over three Thursdays in November at the QMSC pool. In total 33 men and 16 women competed in these events.
While the club championships are a competition, and each event has a winner, the events are very relaxed and informal compared to a normal swimming competition. This is deliberate with the pool events being held during a normal Thursday evening training session. There is no pre-registration and swimmers just turn up the day, swim a normal warm up and then race the events as though they are part of the normal session. With three events on each evening there is very little rest between swims, although a few minutes easy swim is generally provided.
Notably this year the winner of the men's competition for the previous seven years, Dave Warren took a retirement break and didn't compete in the pool events so we were expecting a new winner of the men's trophy. Instead, we got two! The men's overall competition was very close as the top five overall finished within 6 points of each other and resulted in a tie for the overall championship between Matt Wan and Will Wall. Interestingly, between Matt and Will, they won just one individual event, yet they were both consistent and goes to show that consistency is the key to win the overall championship. The top six in the men's overall were:
1= Matt Wan, 50 points
1= Will Wall, 50
3. Dave Adamson, 45
4= Wade Rimbach, 44
4= Etienne Cambier, 44
6. Enrico Hahn, 24
The women's competition wasn't quite so close and resulted in a second consecutive win for Hayley Davis who won 8 out of the 10 events, and was second in the other two events! The top six ladies ranking as follows:
1. Hayley Davis, 78 points
2. Gina Hobson, 55
3. Susan Przywara, 47
4. Alice Dinsdale-Young, 35
5. Abi Hucker, 34
6. Olivia Reynolds, 23
The championship trophies will be awarded to Matt, Will and Hayley at the Otter Dinner on Friday 20 April.
Individual event winners and times were:
Mile (28 July): Dave Warren 21:04, Hayley Davis 20:57
200m Individual Medley (2 November): Dave Adamson 2:17.22, Hayley Davis 2:42.06
100m Freestyle (2 November): Dave Adamson 56.85, Hayley Davis 1:04.97
50m Butterfly (2 November): Wade Rimbach 28.87, Hayley Davis 32.31
50m Freestyle (9 November): Will Wall 26.31, Susan Przywara 29.66
100m Breaststroke (9 November): Wade Rimbach 1:11.25, Hayley Davis 1:23.88
100m Backstroke (9 November): Wade Rimbach 1:05.82, Hayley Davis 1:13.57
100m Buterfly (30 November): Dave Adamson 1:02.44, Hayley Davis 1:14.07
100m Individual Medley (30 November): Dave Adamson 1:03.07, Hayley Davis 1:14.25
400m Freestyle (30 November): Etienne Cambier 4:41.25, Catherine Demont 4:58.81
Buller Challenge Cup - Men's Overall Championship
Jackson Trophy - Women's Overall Championship