GSC Seniors perform positively at the Portugal Nationals
Five Galway SC seniors travelled to compete the Portugal Nationals held in Oeiras,Portugal just outside Lisbon from the 23-27th July, after having a very successful Irish Age/Youth & Open Champiosnhips the previous week.
Competing with the cream of Portuguese swimming in a very new & exciting environment the challenge was made even tougher due to a very strong British team & Swedish attending the competition making finals due to the foreigner rule even more competitive.!
Having come off a very successful & PB rich Irish Open the previous week, personal bests were more difficult to achieve in Portugal with 6 PB’S being achieved by Cian Duffy in the 100/200 Butterfly & 200 Freestyle, Keena Walsh in the 100 Breaststroke & Kate Kavanagh in the 100 Freestyle & also the 100 Backstroke which was also a new Conancht Junior & Senior record.
With the focus fixed in getting back for 2nd swims in either the A/B finals all the competing GSC swimmers got back for 2nd swims over the 4 days meet with Kate Kavanagh making 2 ‘A’ finals in he 50/100 Backstroke finishing 6th in both, David O’Sullivan made an ‘A’ in the 200 Fly finishing 4th & was 2nd in the ‘B’ final of the 100 Fly, Keena Walsh finished 7th in the 200IM, Cian Duffy finished 1st in both the 100/200 Fly ‘B’ finals & Dairne Ryan finsihed 2nd in the 100 Fresstyle ‘B’ final.
This proved to be a very successful end of season competition which the GSC swimmers thoroughly enjoyed & we would like to congratulate Cian,Keena, Dairne,Kate & David for their 5 star performances both in & out of the pool & GSC would also like to thank Team Manager, Ger Keogh for her sterling work whilst away with the team & lastly, to the GSC club committee for supporting the team in attending this very exciting overseas competition.
GSC Seniors from left to right: (Cian Duffy, Keena Walsh, Dairne Ryan, Kate Kavanagh & David O’Sullivan)
