Pershore Swimmer climbs to UK 1st place

05 Jan 2010

Tazmin Pugh becomes UK's number one and climbs into British swimming's Hall of Fame.

In one of the most important open swimming meets at the tail end of the year Tazmin Pugh competed over two days in the 50m Olympic size pool at Millfield School in Somerset. In so doing she increased her UK ranking to first place in several events for the end of the year.

In her first event Pugh swam the 200m freestyle and with a time of 2min44.60 set a new personal best (pb) but having to settle for 2^nd place in the UK rankings though only five hundredths of a second behind first place. Her second event was her weaker 200m breaststroke and although setting a new long course pool length pb remains 5^th in the country.

On the second day came the grueling 400m free. Tazmin set a good pace and improved on her previous best set at Sheffield in November by a superb 9 seconds with a time of 5min45.77 establishing Pugh as number one in the UK. Pugh followed up with another pb in the 200m Individual Medley (IM) and then in the last event of the weekend stormed to her final pb in her race of the meet with 2min.56.48 for the 200m backstroke.

Once again this put Pugh at the top of the UK rankings for the 50m long course pools for 2009 for nine year old girls. It also means Tazmin's time for the 200m back is now in swimming's hall of fame being the 2^nd fastest time ever for a nine year old girl at the end of any year since electronic records began thirteen years ago from the five million times recorded. In fact her 400m free is the 7^th fastest time ever, the 200m free the 9^th fastest time ever and her 200m IM the 12^th fastest ever. Pugh's excellent times also means she has now met the difficult Regional qualifying times in three events six months early but hopes still more will follow.

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