Over 100 swimmers from across the region converged in Cobar on Sunday for the 2020 Western Districts AIF Swimming Carnival with the Cobar Yabbies proving to have the fastest swimmers in the pool.
The Cobar club hosted swimmers from Dubbo, Forbes, Wellington, Nyngan and Condobolin senior clubs to contest the 16 event program.
The Cobar relay team of Lucas Hardy, Matt Harland, Cameron van Breugel and Murray Harland finished almost 20 metres ahead of Forbes to claim the 50 metres Open Scratch Relay trophy with Dubbo back in third place.
Hardy, with a time of 26.10 seconds, won the 50 metre Open Championship with van Bruegel second and Dubbo’s Mark Scullard was back in third place.
And while speed helped the Yabbies to win the two main Scratch events, most of the events were however handicapped and that’s where accuracy proved to be important, particularly in the 30 metres event, which required swimmers to swim 0.05 seconds or better off their nominated times to qualify for the final.
Forbes finished as the overall Club Pointscore winners and were helped with victories in the 4x50m 200 Years Plus Relay and the prestigious 10 Man Handicapped Relay.
Forbes won the 10 Man with a scorching time of 0.78 seconds off their nominated time with Cobar the runners-up with 4.87 seconds outside their time.
Nyngan was well back in third place on 19.72.
The Cobar team finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the 100m Handicapped Freestyle swim with John Carswell the winner over van Breugel and Stephen Clark was third.
Carswell recorded second place in the Ian Settree Memorial Club President’s Race with Forbes president David Sly claiming this year’s trophy. Ron Lovett, from Nyngan was third.
Van Breugel added another trophy to his haul for the day with a second place in the 50 metres Open Handicap swim with Forbes’ swimmers, Ben Cole and Kyle Sharp, finishing in first and third places respectively.
Dubbo swimmers dominated a number of events with Greg Jankowski picking up the 30m and 50m RSL Handicap trophies; Scullard won the 30m Open Handicap event; Brett Schoeffel was first in the 50m RSL Under 50; Tom Gray was out in front in the 50m RSL 65 years and over Championship; Ruby Rook claimed the Women’s 50 metres Open title; and the Dubbo Ducks club won the 4x50m RSL Scratch relay.
Nyngan swimmer David Gibbons won the
50-64 years RSL 50m Championship event and Wellington took out the 6x50m Handicap relay that required a minimum of one RSL swimmer per team.
The Nyngan Splashers will host next year’s Western Districts carnival.
