Junior Swimmers break 99 Records

8th March 2005

By Sarah Marl

Organised by Disability Sport England and funded by BBC Children in Need, the National Junior Swimming Championships was an overwhelming success. The event held over this weekend at Ponds Forge in Sheffield welcomed over 200 disabled swimmers between 10-18 years old. An amazing 99 DSE National records were broken, which highlights how important this event is in a young sports star’s programme.

Amongst the 99 record breakers included two for Claire Cashmore (S9), Thomas Young (S8), Eleanor Simmonds (S6), Daniel Pepper (S14) and Jonathon Fox (S7). At such a high-class junior event you would expect a lot of records, but this event created an even bigger positive outlook for the future stars in disability swimming.

Claire, Thomas, Eleanor and Daniel went on to win the Nationwide Junior Sports Awards and will be presented with their awards at the end of the year at our official reception. These awards are designed to assist talented youngsters at DSE events with a bursary for their sports expenses.

There was a surprise when the Team Points were announced– when Scotland took the prize after many years of conceding to the North West or Eastern team. Scotland came with a powerful team of young swimmers and were very excited to see their hard work finally paid off. North West and Eastern came second and third respectively.

As always, these events would not exist without support from other sources and BBC Children in Need were grateful enough to fund the championships. Other parties involved in assisting were Water Direct, Sheffield Events Unit and Ponds Forge. Without this sort of support the 12 National Championships that DSE organise would not survive.

Richard Caborn MP (Sports Minister) attended on Saturday with the charity’s enthusiastic supporter– Uriah Rennie from Sheffield City Trust– also being present. DSE’s President John Amaechi attended on Sunday to present the trophies and was once again pleasantly surprised at the sort of excitement events such as these create. John is a big supporter of DSE and is working to actively promote our work.

Disability Sport England would like to thank everyone involved in another successful event.  All enquiries regarding our events should be directed to DSE Head Office.

Sarah Marl
Marketing & Communications