WOMEN'S 4 x 100 RELAY STRIKE GOLD
The women's 4 x 100 Freestyle Relay struck gold for Britain
for the third time at this year's European Junior Championships
in Mallorca.
The quartet of Natalie Durant (Ealing), Chloe Ross (Beckenham),
Lauren Collins (City of Birmingham) and Fran Halsall (City
of Liverpool) finished in magnificent
style to claim the gold in 3:47.89.
With solid legs swum by the first three swimmers to keep
the team in contention, Halsall dived in with Britain lying
in 4th place. She moved confidently through the field and
started to go ahead in the last 20 metres when the rest of
team realised it was going to be nothing but gold. Silver
went to Germany in 3:49.23 and bronze to Russia in 3:49.23.
"I was not going to let anyone beat me!" said Halsall.
Tonight also saw five British representatives move successfully
through the semi finals to compete for medals tomorrow night.
Alexander Warren (University of Bath) will go in the 100m
Breaststroke after qualifying in 7th in a time of 1.12.59.
Nova Centurion's Emma Bird touched in 1:13.17, but a 12th
place was unfortunately not good enough to progress.
Marco Loughran (Guildford City) finished second in his 100m
Backstroke semi to guarantee his place in the final after
recording 58.03.
In the men's 100m Freestyle Robbie Renwick (City of Aberdeen)
touched second in his semi with a 51.31 also guarantying his
final place. David Waslin (Kingston on Hull) just missed out
when he finished ranked 13th despite a new personal best of
51.72.
The Stockton duo of Jemma Lowe and Jessica Dickons did it
again qualifying 2nd and 5th fastest in 1:01.06 and 1:01.33
respectively for the women's 100m Butterfly.
In the final of the women's 400m Freestyle, Ceri Unwin placed
7th with a time of 4:23.52 and in the women's 50 backstroke
Fran Halsall finished 4th in 29.96 with Lizzie Simmonds in
7th in 30.50.
After a thrilling finish to the evening's swimming with the
relay gold, Head Coach Bill Pilczuk rounded up the night by
commenting, "It's exciting to see that this team has
now picked up the most gold medals in Olympic events ever
won by a European Junior Team which will help the senior team
in the long run.
"Tonight was mainly about setting up for tomorrow and
we have lots of opportunities for then. We ended on a high
with the relay taking the gold."
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