Tom earns second place in Glasgow International Swim Meet
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Fifteen-year-old Thurso swimmer Tom Armitage produced an excellent performance in the Glasgow International Swim Meet.
The event in the city's Tollcross International Swimming Centre was attended by swimmers from across the UK as well as teams from northern Europe, including the Danish, Icelandic, Irish and Scottish international teams.
The meet was run on a graded basis with "A" grade competitors swimming in the mornings and the "B" grade competitors then in the afternoons.
Tom qualified to compete in eight events overall, these being the 50m, 100m and 200m distances at both back crawl and freestyle as well as the 50m and 100m butterfly. He was swimming the 50m and 200m back crawl in the "A" grade classification which saw him pitched against the best swimmers in the country and beyond.
Tom swam well throughout the meet, achieving new personal best times in three of his eight events, recording times of 27.74s in the 50m free, 29.52s in the 50m fly and 2:09.69 in the 200m freestyle.
The format for the meet saw the top 10 competitors in each of the "A" and "B" grade classifications as well as the juniors (under-17) compete again in a final. Tom’s time in the 200m back crawl of 2:22.10 qualified him to compete in the junior final on the Friday evening.
In the final Tom improved his heats time by almost two seconds for a new personal best of 2:20.33. This time earned him second place, missing out on winning the event by less than half a second.
This was a fantastic achievement for Tom in a high-level event and will encourage him and his fellow club swimmers to continue to train hard with their coaches for the upcoming Scottish Open Meet and Scottish Summer Meet.
