XI FINA Masters World Championships

Stanford, California, USA

August, 2006

A small group of Welsh swimmers took part in this World event where, over 7300 participants, coaches and team representatives from 75 countries enjoyed the extraordinary Stanford facilities. The open air facility included two 50 metre pools and three 25 metre warm up and swim down training pools, which were full of swimmers throughout the competition. In the World championships medals are awarded to the top ten in each age group.

The events and local sight seeing attractions often meant that the welsh swimmers were never at the pool at the same time and as only the swimmers competing on the day were allowed into the pool area suitable group pictures were not taken.

Result table of completed events:

Name / (Age)	Position	Number of competitors	Event	Time	Record/Medal
_{Phil Norman / (50)}	15^th	43	200 back	2:44.96	Welsh record
	22^nd	47	100 back	1:15.07	Welsh record
	26^th	61	50 back	0:34.51
Basil Owen / (76)	9^th	11	400 IM	10:25.31	MEDAL
Lorna Bull / (36)	52^nd	73	50 fly	0:39.44
Lorna Bull / (36)	31^st	44	50 back	0:41.11
Ceri Thomas / (41)	35^th	57	800 free	11:51.73	Welsh record
	46^th	78	200 IM	3:06.63
	29^th	47	100 fly	1:27.08
Jeffrey Thomas / (40)	144^th	202	50 free	0:31.53
Garfield Thomas / (66)	14^th	62	50 free	0:32.04	Welsh record
	16^th	52	100 free	1:14.01
	11^th	36	200 free	2:49.85
	11^th	37	50 fly	0:35.38	Welsh record
	6^th	21	100 fly	1:27.19	MEDAL / Welsh record

Some excellent swims were recorded as can be seen from the Welsh records in the table of results. An additional record broken not shown above was recorded by Ceri Thomas in the 800 free where the 400 split time of 5:47.32 was good enough to gain her the 400 metre freestyle Welsh record. Bas Owen from Arfon was not feeling so good and this probably resulted in his unfortunate DQ in two events and unable to compete in the 100 fly due to a shoulder injury, despite this he gained a MEDAL in the 400 IM though really struggling with the fly leg of the race. A big disappointment for Ceri was a DQ in the 200 fly. Garfield was carrying a back injury throughout the competition and was therefore pleased to manage such good times in the butterfly races, his best times for over 4 years. He was absolutely delighted with his final swim gaining a 6^th place MEDAL and improving on his time at the British Championships in June. He also just missed medals in the 200 free and 50 fly. Phil Norman smashed both the 200 back and 100 back records by a considerable margin and took part in the ‘Escape from Alcatraz’ swim at the end of the competition. Lorna made some good swims considering that she has been out of competition swimming for so long and we look forward to her continued participation in masters swimming, having just returned from abroad. Jeffrey Thomas, who was on his way to a half marathon competition in the far east, was delighted when he got way under the qualifying time for his age group in the 50 m freestyle.

Full results can be found at this link:

http://www.2006finamasters.org/v2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=125&Itemid=119

The number of swimmers taking part can only be visualized, when you see that that there were 136 heats of a 10 lane pool in the men’s 50 freestyle. This one event took nearly 3 hours to complete. World records were being broken throughout the competition and can be seen following this link - http://www.2006finamasters.org/documents/results/records.pdf

Swimmers with interesting photos from the competition please e-mail Garfield for inclusion in this report. Or a gallery of interesting places in California could be set up for those wishing to visit some time.