Masterton swimmer Jo Matthews won a silver medal in her specialist event, the 200m butterfly, at the World Masters Games which finished in Edmonton, Canada last weekend.
Competing in the 50-54s age group Matthews recorded a time of 3min 18.15secs to take second place behind 1968 and 1972 Olympian Laura Vaka
from Mexico.
There were no finals as such at the championships with each competitor in each event being placed in heats and times recorded there deciding where they placed overall.
Matthews was drawn in the heat directly before that in which Vaka competed and she considered that to have any chance of a medal she had to finish in front of her five rivals.
And that she did, with the second placegetter in her heat finishing 7secs behind but still registering a time good enough to win her the bronze medal.
Matthews was understandably happy with her performance, despite her time being 1secs outside her personal best. "Everything went pretty much according to plan?I got out in front and just went for it,"
Matthews had a busy time at the Games, swimming in four other events as well and making the top six in all of them.
She was fifth in the 100m butterfly in a New Zealand record and personal best time of 1min 22.41secs, fifth in the 400m individual medley, sixth in the 50m butterfly and sixth in the 200m breaststroke.
Matthews always anticipated the quality of opposition at the Games as being high but admits to being surprised at just how high it was.
"Everywhere you looked there seemed to be people who had been to Olympics or world championships and most of them were still in good shape," she said.
Matthews also admits to feeling the stresses of international competition with the nervous tension being greater than she had felt before.
"It was difficult not to think about the quality of opposition and whether you had the ability to measure up," she said. "Keeping self belief was hard when you are in that company."
