February 10, 2012

RECORDS CONTINUE TO FALL AT OUA SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIP

Day 2:

SUDBURY, ON – The record breaking party continued in Sudbury on Friday night as six more records fell at the OUA Swimming Championships; 2 relays and 4 individuals.

It was more than half way through the session before a new record was set but that’s all it took as the rest seemed to fall like dominos. Toronto’s Vanessa Treasure set the first record of the night in the 100m breaststroke with a time of 1:10.94 and she will go for the breaststroke sweep tomorrow night in the 50m event after she set the mark in the 200m last night.

After Treasure lit the fuse, the rest of the swimmers took over rewriting the record books. Guelph’s Alisha Harricharan set the mark in the 50m butterfly at 27.31s followed by Toronto’s Mike Smerek in the same discipline at 24.04s.

The most impressive swim of the night came from a pair of Toronto swimmers in the women’s 800m freestyle. Bridget Coley and Heather Maitland were neck and neck all the way to the wall before Coley out-touched Maitland by a fingernail in a time of 8:38.49, 19 seconds ahead of 3rd place and destroying the 12 year old record by over 6 seconds.

It was then left to the relay teams to write some history as both 400m medley relay records were set. On the women’s side, Toronto now holds the record with a time of 4:12.52 and the men’s title belongs to Toronto as well with a time of 3:44.52.

Western currently leads the women’s side with 659 points, followed by Toronto with 462 and McMaster with 377. Toronto tops the men’s side with 542 points, followed by Western with 413 and McMaster with 384.

For a full list of results please visit http://www.personainternet.com/slsc/2012oua/. The action continues Saturday with preliminaries at 10am and finals beginning at 6pm, which will be webcast on www.ssncanada.ca.

Day 1:

SUDBURY, ON -The OUA Swimming Championships got off to a record smashing day one as 1 relay and 4 individual records were set in the Jeno Tihanyi Olympic Gold Pool at Laurentian University. The age of the records varied from 27 years to 7 hours as it was a blistering night in Sudbury.

The record breaking party began early as the Western University Mustangs women's team won the 200m freestyle relay in a time of 1:44.86, breaking the record they set two years ago by over a second. That was soon followed by Heather Maitland (University of Toronto) with a time of 4:10.98 in the 400m freestyle, breaking a 17 year old record. Before the first set of medals was even handed out, Toronto's Frank Despond smashed a 27 year old record by almost 5 seconds, swimming the 400m freestyle in 3:48.63.

Toronto's Vanessa Treasure continued the trend in the 200m breaststroke as she broke an 18 year old record with a time of 2:29.90. Finally, it was Western's Hayley Nell reclaiming her record in the 50m freestyle, edging out McMaster's Sarah Taylor after Taylor set the record in the preliminaries.

For a full list of results please visit http://www.personainternet.com/slsc/2012oua/. The action continues tomorrow with preliminaries at 10 a.m. and finals beginning at 6 p.m., which will be webcast on www.ssncanada.ca.