Dragons Disabled Swimming Club assistant Coach David Roberts MBE broke three World Records at the Great Britain Paralympic Trials this week in Ponds Forge, Sheffield.

David swam in three events at the competition, which saw the top swimmers from Britain vying to achieve qualifying times for the Olympic and Paralympic Games both to be held later this summer in Beijing. The events he chose to compete in were the 50, 100 and 400m Freestyle races.

The races for the Elite Athletes with Disabilities (EAD) swimmers were held in the Multi Disability format whereby swimmers of all classes swam against each other with those swimmers who beat or got closest to their individual classes World Record would take the top spots.

The week started for David with the 400m Freestyle on Monday (31/03/08). The World Record for this event was set in the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games S7 400m Freestyle final in a nail bitingly close race in which New Zealand’s Dean Booth just out-touched David (in his first ever Paralympic final) in a time of 4:53.75. Unfortunately, David just finished outside that time once more posting a time of 4:53.99. This was, however, enough to seal silver medal position behind the S9 swimmer Sam Hynd and achieved a qualifying time for the GB squad for Beijing.

The next event was the 100m Freestyle on Wednesday (02/04/08) of which David held the S7 World Record at 1:01.65, set in the Athens 2004 Paralympics. The heats saw David take 01.15 seconds off that time posting a new Record time of 1:00.50. This wasn’t enough for him though as in the evening’s final he lowered it further to 1:00.34, a full 1.31 seconds off the original Athens 2004 mark and enough for him to win the Gold. David actually expressed some disappointment though as he wanted to get under the 1:00.00 barrier.

The final event for David was the 50m Freestyle on Friday (04/04/08). David held the S7 50m Freestyle World Record for almost eight years until his great British rival Matthew Walker broke it with a time of 28.54, set at the same venue in 2006. David was determined to finally get it back and in the heats he swam an incredible race and set a new World Record time of 27.67, knocking 00.87 off Walkers old record. After a highly emotional and tiring week it was just a step too far for him to break it yet again in the final but he came pretty close posting a time of 27.76 which was enough to win him the Gold medal.

It has also been a successful week for other past Dragons DSC members with Rhiannon Henry, Liz Johnson, Gareth Duke and Nyree Lewis all going a long way to booking their seats for the trip to Beijing.