FOUR members of Evesham Swimming Club competed in their respective age groups at the National Youth Aquathlon Champ-ionships at Loughborough University.

The event is a swim/run event with distances becoming longer with the older age groups.

Loughborough is home of sporting excellence and director/coach of multi-sport is Evesham's Dan Salcedo.

He has a very strong sporting background from national swimming to international triathlete. He is the high performance coach and his role is hunting for talent and developing them into Olympic contenders.

This is all supported with the aid of National Lottery funding.

It was pleasing for the performance coach to see his niece compete in the eight-year-old event. Sophie Mayhew followed in the footsteps of her uncle and parents by finishing in first place.

Next was Harriet Turner in the ten-year-old event where, after a strong run, she pushed herself into third place.

Sister Charlie was next in what was a very close race. Being a track athlete she used her skills brilliantly to claim fourth place.

Last but not least was Isabel Newman a national standard swimmer.

"Isi" showed her experience in the swim to take command going into the run, but the present national champion showed her experience by just finishing ahead of her in again a close race.

Overall, team coach Adrian Mayhew was pleased with the results as it was the first time that any of them had competed in an event such as this.

High performance coach Salcedo was "inspired" with Evesham's performance against some very young but experienced multi sport athletes.