More than 1,600 Masters swimmers come together for National Championships

The GoCardless Swim England Masters National Championships returns this Friday with the three-day event being held at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre.

More than 1,600 swimmers have entered the competition with Masters swimmers from all across the country coming together for a weekend of fast swimming in Sheffield.

Athletes from ages 18 to 87 are expected at Ponds Forge with the event also integrating para swimming into the competition for the third time since its inception in 2022. Classified para swimmers from S1-S14 categories will be taking part in six events across the weekend with two-time Paralympic champion Jessica Jane-Applegate and Paris 2024 silver medallist Callie-Ann Warrington amongst this year’s start lists.

They’ll be chasing more medal success in what will be a fierce and friendly competition in South Yorkshire where multiple British, European and world records are broken each year.

A number of last year’s world record breakers are returning to the competition this time around, including Spencer Swim Team members Diane Ford and Amanda Heath as well as the full Basingstoke quartet of Fleur Turner, Alex O’Kelly, Sarah Hunt and Elizabeth Godfrey that broke two relay world records 12 months ago.

They’ll be targeting more individual success as well as helping their clubs on the way to the Otter 150 Cup.

This cup is a celebration of the shared 150th anniversaries of both Swim England and Otter Swimming Club in 2019 and is annually awarded to the top team at the Championships.

Clubs are awarded a point for every swim across the weekend, without a disqualification, with extra points on offer for the top three in each event and double points for team swims. The team with the most points come Sunday will leave with the trophy.

Trafford Metro looking for a three-peat

The current holders, Trafford Metro, are looking to complete a historic three-peat as they look to back up up their titles from both 2022 and 2023.

They’ve once again entered a strong side which club chairperson and coach Bob Bolton said ‘never ceases to impress’ after their victory last time out.

And after picking up the trophy he was already targeting winning it again, saying: “I hope so. We’ll certainly be targeting this again and there’s a lot of fantastic swimmers out there.

“I know there’ll be a few of them out there thinking ‘right, we’re going to push them all the way’ and I hope that happens, because what happens from that is that the standard just gets higher and higher, and you see that every year now.

“Some of the guys that are swimming at nationals now are putting in some phenomenal times and there’s some amazing times from lots of clubs throughout the country.

“The standard just gets better and better and I think masters swimming needs to be even more on the map of swimming generally, because it really is a phenomenal part of swimming.”

If you want to catch the action at Ponds Forge, spectators for the event are welcome free of charge throughout the three days.

The official event photography will be taken by Will Johnston Photography and you can keep up with all of the results from the competition with our live results page by clicking here.

Action gets underway from 9am each morning and you can find the full schedule and all the event information on the events webpage.