First of all, we’d like to thank everyone for coming yesterday – it was great to have such a high turnout rate, especially given the less-than-ideal conditions. On the morning of the swim, the current was still very strong and we were considering shortening the course, but we decided that most swimmers should be able to make it once they stayed close to the bank on the upstream section. In the end, 28 of the 30 swimmers who started completed the full 2 km course, and all did so within the 1 hr time limit. A great effort was made by all swimmers to reach the 1 km mark, but once they turned around, they were rewarded for their efforts as the current helped them to complete the second half of the swim in less than half the time it took them to complete the first half – by far the best negative splits that I have ever seen! Well done, swimmers.
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| All of the swimmers just after the start... |
Our Fastest Swimmer this year was Chris Mintern of Sunday’s Well SC who completed the swim in 27:04.1, well clear of the rest of the field. The recipient of the Martin Duggan Memorial Shield for the Youngest Swimmer was Ellen Brooks of Fermoy SC, aged 14 yrs 44 days, who completed the swim in a time of 34:16.0. Ellen also received this prize in 2010. Well done Chris and Ellen! Full results of the swim are available on our Results Archive page. Photographs will be available shortly on our Facebook page… (We would like to take this opportunity to boast that we started 7 mins early and that within 20 mins of the last swimmer finishing, the official results were published in PDF format in both English and Irish, without any electronic timing!)
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| Brigid Noonan presenting the prize for the Fastest Swimmer to Chris Mintern, Sunday's Well SC. |
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| John Duggan presenting the Martin Duggan Memorial Shield for the Youngest Swimmer to Ellen Brooks, Fermoy SC. |
We would like to thank Fermoy Rowing Club, Phoenix Kayak Club, the Blackwater Sub-Aqua Club Search & Recovery Unit and other boat crew, Adam, John and Lee, for their continued support of this event, we really could not run the event without it. We would also like to thank our onshore spotters, Leo, Fiona, Anna, Gill, Grace, David, Jack, Mary and Lauren, our referee, Jim, and our timekeepers, Auveen, Catherine, Declan, Joanne and Margaret. I’m sure that the swimmers in particular will want to thank everyone who was involved in providing the much-needed refreshments afterwards, Breda, Amy, Imelda and many many others, including Noel McCarthy of Carry Out off-license, Fermoy! Thanks, of course, to the Duggan family for their continued support of the event and to John for his kind words after yesterday’s swim. Finally, I would like to say a big personal thanks to Brigid Noonan, Dave, Simon and David Mulcahy and George O’Keefe for their help in organizing, and hopefully improving, this event every year.
Well done again to all of our swimmers – we look forward to seeing you all again next year!
Owen O'Keefe
Event Director - MDMS 2012
