Seven Bow Valley Riptides swimmers will dive head first into this weekend’s Provincial Long Course Championship in Calgary (June 30-July 3).
The local swimmers – Anthony Brito, 10, Domenic Griesser, 12, Jeremy Neilson, 12, Marin Williams, 12, Kiana Worobey, 12, Avery Spence, 15, and Neo Gleason, 16 – will try to continue collecting accolades from a record breaking year for the Riptides.
“The (swimmers) coming up are really strong,” said Riptides head coach Don Tremblay. “Overall, the kids at a younger age are swimming faster and the older ones are breaking the club records.”
A club best 45 records have been broken so far this year, which is seven more records broken than last year.
“It’s a good indication of how the program is going well and how (the athletes) are responding to the program and training,” said Tremblay.
Beating some of those records occurred at the Age Group Trials in Lethbridge (June 17-19).
Brito won gold in the 400-metre free, silver in the 200m free and scored two bronze medals in the 100m breast stroke and individual medley.
Brito also broke two club records at the event in the boys U10 200m free (2:36.08), edging out the old record by Peter Brothers (2:36.61) in 2007, and in the boys U10 100m breast (1:39.06) old record by Kai Namba (1:48.62) earlier this year.
Namba also cracked a club record in the 50m breast (47.99) by defeating his old record (48.21) earlier this year.
Placing bronze in the 100m fly was Griesser in a thrilling come from behind medal steal in the final five metres of the race.
“He put his head down and didn’t take a breath,” said Tremblay. “And boom, he managed to make it to the wall without breathing and that was what really made the difference, because the other competitor took two breaths in the final five metres.”
Also scoring bronze medals in their age groups were Neilson in the 400m individual medley and Riley Toohey in the 100m back.
