Testing the Waters
On Thursday 28 November, 17 St Christopher’s pupils from the Junior and Senior Schools travelled to Doha to compete in the H2O Short Course Autumn Cup. The competition was held over three days, with the first event of 800m being held on Thursday evening at The American School, Doha. The next two days were packed with races of varying distances in all four strokes.
St Christopher’s swimmers started the event in style and won a silver and gold medal on the first day of the competition. From day two onwards the medals started to roll in with a total of 53 throughout the whole event! The climax of the second day was the ‘special event’ where we could enter one swimmer to compete in six 25m races. Each race, the fastest two swimmers went through into the next round, and the winner was asked to choose what stroke to swim next. The competition was tough but Dylan Morgan came 2nd and won prize money of 600 Qatari Riyals, which he said he would donate to school in order to gain new equipment for the swim team. Thank you, Dylan!
Apart from medals and certificates the students gained a large number of personal best times. At the end of the event all the individual points were calculated and trophies were awarded to the following students;
Under 9 girls
3rd place points Amalie Nielsen
2nd place points Farah van der Kooi
14-15 girls
3rd place points Cheyma Le Falher
12-13 boys
1st place points Yaseen Le Falher
Team points were also added together and St Christopher’s School was placed fourth overall.
Well done to the following swimmers who took part, as the competition was hard and the event was long. Congratulations on receiving personal bests, certificates or medals.
Cheyma Le Falher Marya Manna Meagan Whalen Louise Leijonberg Roma Vrihof Lauren Wilde Maya Wilde Amalie Nielsen Farah van der Kooi |
Fabiola Mattias Laura Adamson Ayse Atak Yaseen Le Falher Quentin Botha Shane McCarthy Basil Manna Dylan Morgan |
Special thanks goes to AXA Insurance who kindly sponsored our trip and provided swim kit bags for all the students.