Dragons D.S.C. assistant coach David Roberts MBE broke the S7 400m World Record twice in a day on Friday (25/04/08) at the British International Disability Swimming Championships held at Ponds Forge in Sheffield.

David with a gold medal at the Athens 2004 Paralympics

The old World Record for this event was held by New Zealand’s Dean Booth who set it in the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games S7 400m Freestyle final, with David coming in a fraction of a second behind him in Silver medal position. Booth’s time of 4:53.75 stood for almost eight years, a period in which David dominated the S7 400m Freestyle event but never managed to break the record, despite numerous near misses.

After achieving qualifying times for the Paralympics in Sheffield less than a month ago at the Paralympic trials by breaking the World Records for both the S7 50m and 100m Freestyle, David knew that he could come to this event in a relaxed mood without the pressures of having to worry about setting a qualifying time.

He broke the world Record (his first time ever at this distance) in the heats on Friday morning in a time of 4:51.43, over two seconds lower than the original record. Not content with this, in the final later on that evening he then swam a time of 4:49.12, knocking another two seconds off the time he set in the morning, which left him in the position of taking over four seconds off the old World Record in one day!

David now has the following long course World Records:

S7 50m Freestyle

S7 100m Freestyle

S7 200m Freestyle

S7 400m Freestyle

He swam two other events this weekend, the 50m and 100m freestyle. These, along with the 400m freestyle were swum in a multi-disability format with those closest to their class’s world record taking the top medals. David took his second gold in this format this weekend in the 50m freestyle in a time of 28.19 with his S7 rival Matt Walker taking silver and the S9 Simon Miller taking Bronze. His third gold came in the 100m freestyle where he swam a time of 1:02.05 with the S8 Sam Hynd taking silver and Matt Walker taking bronze.