Wairarapa swimmers make decent impact

The six-strong Wairarapa team had mixed results at the New Zealand spring swimming meet held in Wellington last week.
Hamish Hammond (17yrs), Carlin Peterson (15), James Pope (18), William Prior (18), Neil Van Wijk (14) and Isacc Foote (14) did, however, still manage to make a decent impact in the short course (25m pool) competition.
That despite some of them failng to replicate their impressive efforts at the recent winter championships in Wellington and Auckland.
Both Hammond and Prior could be forgiven on the basis they had run two cross-country races, in which they came second and first respectively, as well as playing two rugby games in the week leading up to the spring meet & hardly ideal tapering work for swimming.
Prior also became ill two days before the meet and joined the team for the last two days.
Van Wijk though was in splendid form.
His results at spring meet were actually a significant improvement on his winter champs performance and he picked up a New Zealand third place in the 15yrs-and-under breaststroke and competed in finals for the 50m and 100m breaststroke.
He also broke the Wairarapa short course records in all three of those events, achieving this feat in both the heat and finals.
Foote also performed well during the meet and like van Wijk swam personal best times in all but one of his races.
He improved 6.72secs in the gruelling 400m individual medley, one of his main events.
Pope swam within 0.06secs of the Wairarapa senior men's short course record in his 50m breaststroke heat and had a second chance to improve that time when he tied for the second alternate position and had to swim off to decide who would hold that spot.
Pope did not win the swim-off but he did swim considerably faster than in his heat, breaking his previous Wairarapa record by 0.4secs.
And because of a scratching he was reinstated into the second alternate position anyway.
Peterson equalled his personal best time and qualified as second alternate in the 50m freestyle and beat his pb by 1.3secs in the 100m individual medley.
He also did a pb in the 50m butterfly.
The Wairarapa relay teams enjoyed some success in the relays Initially Swim New Zealand were not going to allow them to enter mixed age relay teams but once the meet began they realised other teams had done so and allowed Wairarapa to compete over the remaining three days.
In the 400m medley relay the team of Hammond, van Wijk, Foote and Peterson broke the Wairarapa senior men's short course relay record and the team of Prior, Foote, van Wijk and Pope broke the 400m freestyle relay record.