example-image
Connect with Us:  

Sweetenham Allows Foster and Others to Enter More Events

Jun 30, 2001  - Anita Lonsbrough

Bill Sweetenham the British National Performance Director, set tough standards for next month's World Championships and has been is "delighted so many of our swimmers responded and met the challenge".

Sweetenham encouraged with twenty seven making the team he has "decided to offer swimmers to compete in other relevant events" but to do so they must have achieved "the sixteenth time" in a final of one of the counting four trial events.

Four swimmers will be given a chance including Mark Foster, who failed by just two hundredths to achieve the target time to add the 50m freestyle to the 50m butterfly. The thirty-one year old did establish a British record of 22.13sec in a time trial, which the selectors would not consider.

The double world short course champion swims his freestyle on the opening two days and Sweetenham is hoping he lives up to his boast of "I am guaranteed to win a medal of sorts" for the freestyle. Foster's 50m freestyle is on day one and two of the championships and a medal would give the team the ideal start.

Also given a chance to swim extra events are Karen Pickering the former Commonwealth 100m freestyle champion in the 200m the event for which she was the World short course champion back in 1993, Katy Sexton the Commonwealth 200m backstroke champion, in the 100m backstroke and Jaime King in the 100 and 200m breaststroke the events for which she broke the British records at the Trials last April.


In Other News
Mike Drew a former British coach and chief coach to the Killerwhales club, has been sentenced to eight years after admitting guilt on ten counts of indecent assault on adolescents predominantly in the 1970's and 80's. He has also been placed on the sex offenders list and permanently suspended by the Amateur Swimming Association.