Eight medals a week

Year 8 pupil, Marty, has just completed five days of racing at the London Summer Championships, the regional competition of Swim England. He competed in 13 disciplines, achieving significant personal best times in most events and was awarded an amazing eight medals.

Marty explains: “The regional competition is a key event in my current training calendar, as it falls within the qualifying window for the National Summer Meet, Swim England’s biggest domestic swimming event of the year, in August. This is the first time that I am old enough to qualify for English nationals, so I am working very hard to make the rankings.”

The first year that swimmers are eligible for nationals can be particularly hard, since the rankings use a double age group, which means Marty will be competing against other 13 and 14 year olds.

Marty (pictured, below, at a previous swimming event) added: “The rankings won’t be finalised until the end of the qualifying window, so I have one more racing event (Cardiff, later in May) within this qualifying window. After that, I will find out whether I have been invited to the nationals!”

Mr Fuller, Director of Sport at Wetherby Senior, said: “Marty has made significant progress in recent years and is an outstanding example of a great student athlete. All at Wetherby Senior will be keeping our fingers crossed for his Cardiff race in May, and hoping that he will meet the milestone achievement of being invited to nationals.”