Summer Smash 2023

3rd April 2023

Click here for Results

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A good number of brave people turned up to outdoor pool at MSAC on Friday night for the sixth running of the Summer Smash hosted by Powerpoints. Given the date (and the conditions) perhaps we should have called it the “late summer smash” or “early autumn action”. The outdoor temp was below 20 degrees when we started (and felt a few degrees cooler, especially when wet) so there was a bit of shivering going on before we were eventually done at 8:30. Of course, at the time of writing this report barely 20 hours later it is 30 degrees – that’s Melbourne for you. We had more than 70 swimmers take part, which is fabulous for a Friday evening time trial meet, on a night when Ed Sheeran was also playing live in Melbourne. We think we might have had a better show, but given I didn’t see Ed play, I can’t be sure. 

Despite the cool conditions, we saw lots of good performances from both seasoned and new competitors. The Summer Smash was designed to provide a casual gateway for new Masters swimmers to get the feel of competition (and hopefully get hooked) and this year we did have several newbies swimming. A few more new members came to observe and help with timekeeping. Also great to see Maciej flying the Tassie flag here again (sorry we gave you Tasmanian weather for an outdoor comp Maciej!). 

We saw several individual records broken:

• Rod Laurie continued his fabulous season, lowering his own national record for the 100 fly, and breaking two Vic branch records in freestyle.

• Lisandra De Carvalho broke the national record in the 100 butterfly.

• New member Courtney Ford broke the Vic branch record for the 50 backstroke (welcome to Masters Swimming!).

• Maciej Slugocki lowered his own Tas branch record in the 100 freestyle.

 

Which then brought us to the feature event of the evening – the mixed 4x200 freestyle. Three Powerpoints combinations took to the water, but the night truly belonged to the 200-239 grouping of Lachlan McDowell, Mark Thompson, Gillian O’Mara and Jennie Bucknell who combined to smash the world record for their age group. This outcome was never in doubt on the night, as all four swam beautifully and made sure of their changeovers. Their final time of 8:55.03 was more than 20 seconds under the previous world mark!  Fun fact; this time is also faster than any other Australian masters relay in history – of any age group. There’s a challenge for some of the younger swimmers out there.  

This was a fine way to finish the night. As we have seen before, the Summer Smash was nice casual event at a great venue. Meet Director Sal Cuming welcomed our new (and returning) swimmers and kept us all informed (and entertained) with her commentary throughout the evening. Sal certainly increased the hype as we neared the end of the relay event! 

Many thanks to Alan Godfrey for setting up and recording the meet and to Simon Bole-Brown and his fabulous band of officials for event management and keeping us all in check.