There comes a moment during the Cobar Yabbies Senior Men’s Swimming Club’s season when the swimmers all pause, take off their googles and peer into the distance at that one swimmer who’s way out in front of the pack.
This season there’s two swimmers who are leading the race and that moment came last week when seven times club champion, Murray Harland, and six times champion Bill Fugar, waded into the deep end and both emerged at the end of the night with a big tally of club championship points, 20 for Harland and 17 for Fugar.
The Yabbies competition is not about speed, although the pair are up there with the fastest swimmers in the club, but accuracy.
The way to win races and points at Yabbies is to swim closest to your nominated time.
Over the past 20 years, the veteran pair have dominated the Curly Solomon Shield Point Score contest.
Apart from Harland and Fugar, only five other swimmers have had their names engraved on the trophy in that time—Scott Toomey (who won it twice), Grant McDonald, Jarrad Davey, Cameron van Breugel and, last year’s winner, Tom Jones.
Only one other Yabby has more plaques on Curly’s trophy than Harland and Fugar and that’s Ian ‘Setts’ Settree who won the club champion trophy eight times between his first win in the 1981/1982 season and his last in 2010/2011.
Over the back half of this season, Harland’s form has been sensational, and in the past month he’s recorded two spot on times and five other times that were less than 0.10 of a second off his nominated time.
His best time last week was 0.03 seconds off his nominated time which earned him the win (and seven points) in the 50 metres handicapped freestyle event.
He had some good competition with Bob Clark and Dave Mexted tying for second place after both clocked 0.18 seconds off their times.
Harland won the 30m swim with 0.09 seconds off his time, just a blink ahead of Fugar on 0.10 and Clark grabbed third place with 0.17 seconds off his time.
With more precious club champion points up for grabs, two timers went assigned to Harland’s lane for the 100 metres swim. They clocked him in second place with 0.30 seconds off his nominated time.
Perhaps they should have had their eye on Fugar as he took line honours with 0.13 seconds off his time.
Paul Finucane finished in third place after he finished within on 0.48 seconds of his nominated time.
A Cobar Yabbies newcomer, Jacob Wilson, on his first swim with the club, collected a stubby holder prize when he teamed up with Kyle Roberts to win the Brace Relay novelty event.
The pair completed the dolphin dive race across the pool within 0.16 seconds of their combined nominated time.
Harland and James Daymond were second (1.37) and Henry Knight and Scott Toomey finished third on 1.72.
