Records tumble at new Dargaville pool

Northland swimmers have given the new 50m pool at Dargaville the thumbs up after a slew of records were broken over the weekend.
One of the swimmers to break a race record on Saturday, Ashlee Crane, was in the pool last time the Northland Age Group Championships were held in a 50m pool - back in 2005 in Whangarei.
She broke a record then in the 10 year-old girls 50m butterfly and on Saturday at the Kauri Coast Community Pool again went under the record in the Girls 16 and over 100m freestyle heat - an event she was at pains to point out wasn't her specialty.
Crane was one of three swimmers to go under the 2005 mark, despite finishing behind fellow Bay of Island club swimmers Carla Marsh and Sarah Gorman.
"I don't seriously swim the 50 fly anymore, I've moved on to the 100m fly and 200m. I remember winning a 100m fly race when I was 10 but not that 50m record, it was six years ago, so ... people are talking about breaking race records this weekend but I wonder how many Northland records will be broken," she said.
She was relieved that Northland finally has a 50m pool to compete in and said it had helped her times at the meeting.
"I like doing fly in the 50m pool - more than swimming short course (25m pool) - because it suits me, I'm probably a bit lazy on my turns," she laughed.
"Last night I qualified for the open nationals by swimming my second personal best in the 100m," she added.
The president of Swimming Northland Kim McCahon said it was great to get the age group championships - Northland's biggest swim meeting of the year - back into a 50m pool.
"It's the ultimate for swimming, the 25m pools are great and they have their place but having a 50m pool puts us up with the other regions - every other region has one or more 50m pools but over the past five years our swimmers have had to travel to other regions to swim, so this enables us to stay here," she said.
She said the age group championships have effectively been a short course event since the Whangarei 50m pool disappeared when the Aquatic Centre was redesigned in 2005. The age-group records from then were dusted off before the weekend and today's top age grade swimmers had a go at beating them in the new Dargaville pool.
"This meeting has historically been held in a 50m pool and so I guess that makes Dargaville not only the kumara capital of Northland - it's also the swimming capital of Northland now," she said.
McMahon said news of the new pool had spread quickly and Auckland teams had come up to meetings since it opened last year and a team of swimmers from Cambridge attended the age group championships this weekend.
More than 200 swimmers competed for their Northland ranking in the pool over the weekend with several breaking records, some of them qualifying for national age group championships.
"It's a big achievement for the people of Dargaville and especially those people who fought hard to get this pool built," McMahon said.
The championships final session were completed last night. A full wrap of the Age Group championships plus results will follow in tomorrow's Advocate.