International bronze for Sutton SC’s Ruslan

This was a competition attended by over 300 swimmers from countries including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus and Moldova.

This competition enabled Ruslan to gain experience of international competition having already competed in the British National Age Group Championships earlier this year.

All races were Open Age, meaning that Ruslan was competing against swimmers of all ages including fully grown men.

Ruslan swam well in all his events but amazingly won a bronze medal in the 200m butterfly event in a huge personal best time of 2.12.97.

Ruslan proudly competed at this event in his Sutton Swimming Club Cap which raised great interest from his rival competitors.

Sutton continued their fine run of form by winning the final round of the JC Dobbs competition at Hucknall Leisure Centre.

This was the final round of the competition for 2013 and when the gala points were added together from previous rounds it was established that Sutton SC had finished as runners up to Kimberley SC in the overall competition

In this particular competition most events have cut off times which means that the team managers have to select carefully as any swimmer going faster than the cut off time not only does not receive any team points but actually gets five points deducted from the team total.

The challenge is to select swimmers with personal bests that are near to the cut off time to enable some improvement and give the best chance of winning the race. This becomes more difficult to manage when selecting the relay teams.

Sutton Swimmers aged between eight years and 15 yearrs competed on the night for the club and notwithstanding that they had several swims that went faster than the cut off times, the club’s recent winning streak continued with a comfortable points win by the end of the evening over runners-up Kimberley SC.