A team from the Cobar Yabbies Senior Men’s Swimming Club competed at the 85th AIF National Swimming Carnival on the Gold Coast over the weekend.
Overall Cobar finished 4th in the Bill Lough Memorial Handicap point score with hosts Southport the winners.
Cobar was also second in the Jacaranda Per-petual Men’s Championships competition.
The Cobar relay team of David Mexted, Rob Dickerson, Shane Josephson and Paul Swain-ston finished second (with 0.62 seconds off their nominated time) in the 4 x 50 metre nom-inated time handicap relay for swimmers aged 30 – 59 years.
Also finishing second in the 6 x 50 metre championship relay was the Yabbies team comprised of Jason Toomey, Owen Small, Stuart Small, Cameron van Breugel, Ben Plush and Grant McDonald.
The competition was tough this year (in the 30 metres handicapped event there were seven 0.00 times recorded in the heats).
Among those that finished on the podium were: Stuart Small—3rd, Men’s Open Back-stroke; Murray Harland—3rd, 55-59 Men’s freestyle 50 metres and 3rd 100metres handi-capped; Owen Small—1st, Men’s 45-49 free-style 50 metres; Stuart Small—2nd, Men’s 45-49 freestyle 50 metres; Ben Plush—3rd, Men’s 40-44 freestyle 50 metre; and Cameron Van Breugel—1st Men’s 25-29 50 metre freestyle sprint (31.44 seconds).
Cobar club members Bill Fugar, Matt Har-land, Grant McDonald, Greg Aird, Stephen Clark and Bob Clark however missed out on podium finishes.
In the Yabbies club event last Tuesday night at the Cobar pool, Bill Fugar was the stand-out swimmer with two firsts and a second place finish.
Fugar won the 30 metres handicapped free-style event with a time of 0.10 seconds off his nominated time ahead of Cameron van Breugel with 0.16 and Tyler Roberts on 0.25.
Fuger’s time of 0.06 seconds off his nomi-nated time narrowly gave him the win in the 100m swim just ahead of Paul Swainston on 0.09 and David Mexted was third with 0.13.
In the 50m swim, 0.06 was once again the winning time and this time it was recorded by Lucas Hardy
Back in second place was van Breugel (0.28) while third was Chris Powell with 0.31.
Hardy and van Breugel teamed up to win the Brace Relay dolphin dive across the pool.
They finished within one seconds of their nominated time.
Fugar and Swainston were further back in second place with 2.94 and then Powell and John Claus claimed third spot with 3.66 seconds off their time.
