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Griffin Gala - Enfield Pool 15th May 2004

As Arsenal fans were clapping there heroes off at Highbury, 27 swimmers ignored BBQs, the Eurovision song contest and Rugby presentations (thank you James Ilic) to swim at Enfield Pool in a Griffin invitation gala. Things had not started so well when one swimmer pulled out earlier in the day through illness and another did not turn up. Things got worse!!!!!!

We first went to the wrong pool and then found out during warm up that we had been given the wrong programme meaning a very very late change in the order of freestyle relays and complete withdrawal of medley relays???!!!! 

Nevertheless we are the Harlow Penguins and made changes seamlessly with no swimmer missing a race and everybody having at least one individual and one relay race.

In fact Natalie Ling, Ryan Wolfe, Nicole Davidson, Chris Stevens and Ellis Foot were all caught speeding at the Griffin gala and subsequently disqualified for swimming tooooo fast. These rules were known beforehand but the swimmers above were just too good!!!

We actually won 16 of the 45 races but only 11 counted. We came second in 9, third in 11, only five fourths but also four non "speeding" DQs.

Every swimmer seems to have achieved personal bests with lots of happy faces. George will take the formal times attached and update the PB database ignoring the split times which don't count but are there for information. All times are kept and referred too when picking future squad galas.

Harlow Penguins secured third place overall - if we had avoided just 2 DQs we would have come second! It really does not matter as the team atmosphere as well as behaviour was first class.

My favourite races were Joseph Cooper in the 50m breaststroke, Ben Want 50m back, Antonia Foot in the Squadron relay and Calum Tremayne in the 50m fly. Special mention must be made of the following outright winners:-

John Reynolds u10 50m breast, 
Harry Newman u12 50m free,
James Ilic u11 50m back,
Ria Melvin u10 25m fly,
Ellis Foot u10 25m fly,
Antonia Foot u14 50m free, 
Ben Want u12 50m back, 
Calum Tremayne u14 50m back.

All times, splits and positions can be found here.

Finally thank you to all our noisy supporters plus: Eric (starter), Paul "does this clash with an anniversary" Davidson (Timekeeper), Carol (Coach), Theresa (Girls Team Manager), Lesley Foot (excitable splits) and Holly (Relay takeover expert) for making this gala a success.

Legend