Following a near miss of qualifying for the 400m Freestyle at the
DX February Festival Francesca Muir-Harris entered the International
Swim Meet Berlin 2014. We left after training on Wednesday 26th March
for Stanstead Airport where we stayed overnight before flying to Berlin
Schonefeld Airport early Thursday morning. We arrived at our hotel where
we left our bags whilst we went to find the pool. Luckily the pool was
situated just 5 minutes away, the facilities were amazing, there was not
just the 50m 10 lane competition pool but there was also another 10
lane 50m pool in the complex along with 2 teaching pools and a diving
pit. In the afternoon Fran swam in the public session to loosen off
after the journey and to acclimatize to the pool. After this we caught
the tram into the center of East Berlin and had a wander round before
heading back to the hotel for dinner and an early night before the race
on Friday.
On Friday morning we again went over to the pool to
register and to pay the entry fee, everything was very well organised
and we were given start sheets and poolside passes, it was very
exciting, in the competition pool all the flags of the competing nations
were hanging from the ceiling which added to the atmosphere. When we
returned in the afternoon for warm - up we couldn't believe how many
swimmers there were, the pool was heaving, the warm up was mixed with no
apparent restrictions on how many swimmers were allowed in each lane,
it was even more dangerous when swimmers started diving in from the
start end in regardless of lane, however all swimmers seemed to avoid
injury ready for the start of racing!
The 400m Free was the first event and Fran was in
Heat 4 Lane 7, the race itself was very exciting with Francesca slowly
working her way through the field to win her heat by .02 sec, however
more importantly she finished in 4.28.86 which means she will now be
joining her fellow Long Eaton and DX Team Mates Hannah Jones and Kevin
Wallbank in Glasgow for the British Championships in April. Report by Dominique.
A massive congratulations from all at LESC to the 3 British Championship (Commonwealth Games Trials) Qualifiers.
