14th LEN Masters Championships – Eindhoven

The 14^th European Masters Swimming Championships was held in Eindhoven from 1-7 Sep 2013, where more than 4000 Swimmers representing over 1200 clubs took part.
10 World and 60 European records were broken. 
The Russian club Tsunami was top winning 12 gold, 12 silver and 8 bronze medals. 
The top British club was Spencer in 8^th position with 9 gold, 6 silver and 11 bronze.
Gloucester Masters was 113^th with 1 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze.

The event took place in the new Pieter van den Hoogenband stadium.  This is a large aquatic complex comprising the 10 lane 50m competition pool, a 4 lane 50m pool, a 6 lane 25m pool, several children’s and teaching pools and a large open air leisure pool with slides and fountains.  The event was exceptionally well run, and on most days ran ahead of schedule, sometimes by up to 30 minutes.  The weather was hot and the outdoor pool was a very relaxing way to swim down after your race.

Being The Netherlands, cycling was the order of the day.  It took just 7 minutes to cycle from the hotel to the pool, wending one’s way through another large sporting complex of many synthetic turf hockey pitches and tennis courts. 

The highlight of the meet for Gloucester Masters was the 100m freestyle for men aged 55-59 years.  Colin Stephenson won the gold medal in a new British record time of 59.54 seconds. He also took the bronze medal in the 50m freestyle and was placed 4^th in the 200m.

Sue Hodge took the silver medal in the women’s 100m freestyle in the 60-64 age group.

Swimming for Spencer on this occasion, in the 70-74 age group, Tony Cherrington took silver medals in the 800m and 400m freestyle, bronze in the 100m and bronze in the 3km open water event. 

Jessica Wooddisse, swimming for Stroud, took the silver medal in the 800free (35-39).

After a week’s gruelling competition, and having enjoyed remarkable success, the little team from Gloucester Masters returned home with happy memories of beautiful weather, safe cycling and superb buffets.