Pershore pair take Coventry by storm

Both twelve year old Harry Sykes and ten year old Tazmin Pugh entered only the bare minimum of their ten favoured events and yet still came away nine place medals eight of  which were coloured gold.

Sykes took gold medals in the 100m and 200m Breaststroke events with a personal best (pb) in a time of 1.26.30 and 3.13.84 respectively, following this with a silver in the  200m Individual Medley (IM) with 2.53.08 being another long course pb.  A creditable 6^th place in the 400m free with 5.43.37 another pb completed a succesful day for Sykes.

Pugh started her bid for glory on the day comfortably winning the 100m back in a long course pb of 1.21.61 rising to 1^st in the UK end of year rankings, following this with a gold in the 50m freestyle with another pb of 33.58.  During the second session Pugh once again proved her supremacy winning both the 200m IM and gaining 2^nd place in the UK rankings and 50m Backstroke (5^th in UK) events.  

In the third and final session of the day Pugh aimed to become top ten year old girl for the whole meet, having to compete in a 50m sprint, a 100m event, an IM event, a form event being 200m back, breast or fly and a distance event being either 200m or 400m freestyle and from which International FINA points are awarded.   Having only entered one of each (apart from two sprints) she was up against it.

Her first event of the evening was the 200m free (5^th in UK) which she took with ease by a 4 seconds margin over 2^nd place.  It now all came down to her last event, the other competitors having entered up to ten events each and were still ahead of Pugh.    Fortunately it was Pugh's best event in which she was lying 1^st in the UK rankings in the short course (25m pools) and although not a pb her time of 2.54.93 was over 6 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor and means she rises to her highest long course ranking as 2^nd in the UK.   With this Pugh took the title 'Top Girl' for the meet having accumulated 1802 FINA pts, her winning victory being the highest from amongst all the age groups on the day, her nearest rival ending 481 pts behind on 1321.