SWIMMING
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BATHURST’S Collette Lyons has announced herself as one of the nation’s most promising junior swimming talents by winning an incredible six gold medals at the recent Pacific School Games.
Lyons, 10, blitzed her rivals on her way to picking up nine medals in total at the Adelaide-based competition, where she swam against some of the best Oceania has to offer.
The Cathedral School student won gold medals in the 200 metres medley, 4x100m medley relay plus her pet 50m and 100m breaststroke events.
She also picked up two Games records as part of the New South Wales 4x50m and 4x100m freestyle relay teams on her way to more gold.
Confident that she might be able to win one medal at least, Lyons said to come away with nine blew her expectations out of the water.
“My mum said on the plane it would be amazing to get one medal. To get nine medals was a bit of a shock,” she said.
“I never knew what type of competition I would have had, but I thought ‘Well, I’ve been training really hard and I’ve done a competition similar to this’, so I thought I might be able to do it.
“It was a great atmosphere and everyone was cheering when it was on finals. When they’d say your name on the loudspeaker your state would cheer. That was very cool.”
The first gold Lyons picked up for the 200m individual medley, was not only her favourite medal to come away with, but one of her most dominant victories.
Her winning time of two minutes and 44.13 seconds put her just under 13 seconds clear of her nearest rival.
“The 200IM was probably the best, because I was in the lead by quite a bit. That would be my favourite one,” Lyons said.
Lyons’ 50m breaststroke gold was another highlight given she went into the final with the third fastest time, then lowered her mark from the preliminaries by almost a full second to win in 39.53.
It is also hard to look past her record-breaking efforts in not one, but two relay events for NSW.
“We’d never swum together before, so to get a record was pretty good. We never knew what the record was, so we just tried our best and got it,” Lyons said.
The NSW team’s 4x50m freestyle gold came in a thriller against Queensland, with Lyons and her team stopping the clock in 2:03.43 to win by just 0.23 of a second.
The 4:39.15 for the 4x100m was the other record mark, Lyons helping her team to another victory over their northern rivals.
The remainder of Lyons’ medals came in the 100m butterfly, 4x50m medley relay (silver) and 8x50m freestyle all age (bronze) events.
Lyons missed out on a podium by a single place in the 40m butterfly and 100m freestyle.
Her results are made all the more remarkable by the fact the worst performance from Lyons’ 12 events was still a fifth place in the 50m freestyle.
“Everyone is immensely proud of her. We’ve been following her progress through the different pathways, from school carnivals to regional to diocesan through to the state carnival, and she did so well at the NSW PSSA Carnival where she was selected to represent NSW at this School Sports Australia Carnival,” Cathedral School principal Patrick Allen said.
“The carnivals she was in to get to this level were back in term one. There’s been a lot of distance since then and now, but she’s just been training on and doing her work all that time to keep herself right for this championship.”