FINA World Masters Championships 2006 - Stamford University, California
4th-12th August 2006.
Report by Rob Arnold
A once-in-a-lifetime experience! That's the only way I could describe the FINA World Masters Swimming Championships held at Stamford University in California.
Karen Elly, Richard Symons and myself stayed with my aunt and uncle in Palo Alto, only about 10 minutes cycle away from the pool was a real bonus. San Francisco had had their own heatwave just days before we arrived. You thougnt it was hot in Old Blighty- try temperatures of 110 degrees. I'm glad we missed it but it was still in the high 80s when we arrived.
My aunt and uncle on my dad's side have lived in the same house for 50 years. One of those roomy wooden affairs with lots of big windows but unfortunately no air conditioning, so sleeping at night was difficult. The neighbourhood could almost be described as genteel. Lots of nice houses in a wealthy San Franciscan suburb, kept clean by the army of gardeners and home helps which seemed to descend on the area on Fridays. Oh yes, and Steve Jobs of Apple Computer fame lives 3 blocks away. Well we are in Silicon Valley.
The meet included 'Speed swimming' (as opposed to open water swimming, where clearly the swimmers don't swim fast!), water polo, diving, synchro swimming and open water swimming. 74 countries were represented at the Opening Ceremony and in total over 7500 participants were taking part. Nearly 5000 of these in the speed swimming events.
The Avery Aquatic Centre is something we could only dream about in the UK. It consists 2 50m pools set end to end, a 25m warm up pool and a diving pool which was also used for warm-ups and swim downs-all open-air of course.
The arrangement was that on one day the women would swim in the Belardi Pool and the men in the Baker Pool and the next day they would switch over. The events started with the oldest age-groups starting at 8.00am. The last heat in the age-group was often the fastest or Championship heat which would be announced by the commentator, who seemed to have coached at least half the 5000 competitors personally, because he would know their PBs and their swimming history and announced the world best times they were trying to beat. I was staggered when I saw a gent in the 70-75 age-group do a 65sec 100m freestyle.
To give you some idea of the standard of entry there were 175 ex-olympic swimmers competing and 155 world records were broken in various age-groups.
Karen and I were swimming on the first day in the 800m freestyle. The Realtime results were published on the Internet so we could judge when we needed to go down for the warm-up. My cousin Gina, who was competing in the diving competition, had hired mountain bikes for us for the week which made getting to and from the pool a doddle. I eventually swam at about 4.00pm bearing in mind the event had started at 8.00am. and was delighted with my swim - not because of the time (9.50.83) so much although it was only .23 off my PB but more because of the was I had swum. The pace judgement had been as good as I had hoped for and I nearly negative-splitted. The time was good enough for 20th. The winner went 8.42 and broke the world record in the process.
Karen swam an excellent well-paced race to record a time of 10.16.69 to give her 9th place and her first medal (medals are given to the first 10 places). The winner in her heat went 9.34. Its also interesting but not really surprising that Karen was the only non-US in the first 15 places. Sheila Taormina of triathlon fame broke the world record for her age-group 35-39 in 9.13.49.
The next day was 100m freestyle and after colliding with the lane rope on the first length I recorded a time of 1.02.88-probably the slowest time I had recorded as a Master. I was just glad to do a faster time than that gent in the 70-75 year age-group! Anyhow the less said about that the better. The 100m freestyle is often the most popular event and with 128 heats in the men's event this certainly proved to be the case. That's nearly 1300 swimmers!
Karen also did the 100m freestyle and went 1.07.34 to place 19th - the only event in which she did not win a medal.
Richard's first event was the 200m backstroke where he recorded 2.30.- well have you ever tried swimming backstroke outdoors with only the clouds to guide you?
The week went on with Karen and I swimming every day either in the warm up pools at Stamford or at either of the two municipal pools both about 10 minutes away and both laned off for training purposes.
The evening were spent eating out at the many restaurants in Palo Alto and then frequenting the many bars for a 'nightcap'.
For the whole two weeks the weather remained glorious and we were all sorry to come home. The trip home was pretty uneventful despite the extra security measures imposed except that Richard lost his phone in the taxi on the way to the airport and I lost my house and car keys necessitating breaking the glass in my backdoor to break in to my own home. I'm still looking for an inexpensive glazier in Altrincham to do a repair job. Any suggestions?
As for the Meet it really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
For anyone interested the website address for the event is: www.2006finamasters.org
Karen Elly
| 800m free | 10.16.69 | 9th | British Record |
| 200m br | 3.07.97 | 6th | |
| 200m free | 2.22.13 | 7th | British Record |
| 100m free | 1.07.34 | 19th | |
| 400m free | 5.00.41 | 6th | British Record |
Rob Arnold
| 800m free | 9.50.83 | 20th |
| 100m free | 1.02.88 | 59th |
| 100m fly | 1.09.96 | 31st |
| 200m fly | 2.35.08 | 10th |
| 400m free | 4.49.60 | 25th |
Rich Symons
| 200m back | 2.30.95 | 17th |
| 200m free | 2.09.92 | 25th |
| 100m back | 1.08.22 | 22nd |
| 400m free | 4.46.14 | 19th |
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