Young defending champ to contest state title

“To be the best in the state from a small town is a pretty big deal.” Southern Downs’s top swimmers expected to shine at State Sprint Championships.

DEFENDING CHAMPION: Bailey Harm will be hoping to win the 11-year-old boys 50m freestyle after taking out the 10-year-old last year.

SWIMMING: Allora swimmer Bailey Harm will be looking to defend his gold medal swim in the 50m freestyle this weekend at the State Sprint Championships.

Competing with 17 of the region’s fastest swimmers Harm’s coach Andrew Fidge is hopeful he will defend his title in the 11-year-old boys’ category.

“To be the best in the state from a small town was a pretty big deal,” he said.

“It’s quite a competitive little age group that one.

“It’s been a whole year, there’s new kids that have turned up in that time, so it’ll be interesting to see.”

It won’t be the first time that fellow swimmer Will Gilmore will compete at the Sleeman Sports Complex – a pool notorious for bringing out fast times in swimmers.

“I always love going down to Chandler, it’s a really good pool to swim in and that’s where most fast times are done for me,” Gilmore said.

“In freestyle hopefully I’ll be able to swim low 26 or 25 seconds and butterfly would be 27 seconds.

“I have swum 25 seconds in a relay but never in an individual swim – I’ve been close to it.”

With a number of the swimmers already competing throughout the week, Fidge said his swimmers have been on a reduced number of sessions to prepare them for the sprint championships.

“Training has just been light this week, a lot of them have had a lot of carnivals,” Fidge said.

“We’ve just been putting spend on them and cleaning up some skills.

“I’m just hoping they all swim personal bests – that’s all you can ask for.”

Competition starts on Saturday at 8.30am at the Sleeman Sports Complex.

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