Matthew Bradley from Sedgefield 75 Swimming club represented the UK in the Durham International Youth Games held at Freemans Quay in Durham City on 16th June.
Matthew was part of a 12 strong team of youngsters selected from swimming clubs and schools around County Durham. The UK team competed against France, Germany, Italy, Bangladesh, Brazil, Slovakia, Hungary, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Russia.
Matthew swam 50M butterfly as part of the mixed UK ‘A’ Individual Medley team. finishing in second position taking a silver medal. He then swam in the men’s 100M breaststroke achieving a personal best time of 67.94 seconds and dominated the opposition by beating the second place competitor by 13 seconds for a gold medal.
He then swam in the men’s individual medley event with another personal best time of 2 minutes and 13 seconds taking second place against strong competition from Italy’s Tasso Allessandro who won the event by a narrow margin of 0.8 seconds.
Matthew went on to swim in the men’s 50M breaststroke, winning gold with a time of 33.54 seconds. His final swim was in the mixed 6 by 50M freestyle UK ‘A’ team. where he swam the last 50M in a time of 26.08 seconds winning gold for the team.
The UK team won the swimming event overall and across the whole games the UK team won the competition beating Germany into second place by a margin of 40 points. In all 226 athletes competed from eleven countries as part of the games. Sports included swimming, athletics, fencing, gymnastics and rowing.
John Moore Head Coach at Sedgefield 75 ASC was extremely pleased to have a swimmer chosen for the event and also to have a swimmer in the winning UK team.
Sedgefield 75 ASC train at Newton Aycliffe Leisure Centre. They currently have several world, European, National, Regional and county record holders in their squads.
Details of training times and how to join the club are available at the centre or from the website at:- http://freeteams.net/sedgefield75/index.html
