Kellians Podium at Paralympic World Cup

David Hill and Claire Cashmore of Kelly College joined the British Team to compete at the 2nd Visa Paralympic World Cup in Manchester on Saturday 6th May.  The invitational World Cup attracted over 360 athletes from 41 countries competing in four sports, swimming, wheelchair basketball, athletics and cycling and was televised on Sunday by BBC Sport.

Double Paralympic medallist 17 year old Claire Cashmore from Kelly was again in record breaking form. Competing in the (S9) 50m Freestyle, Claire was up against the South African superstar Natalie Du Toit who is the only disabled swimmer in the world to have made a Commonwealth Games International selection for an able bodied team also.  Claire was determined to swim well against the South African and also her closest matched rival Stephanie Dixon from Canada. Claire swam a blistering race from the start and was rewarded with a new British record of 30.76.  Miss Du Toit, still on a taper from the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, stormed in setting a new world record in 29.53. The surprise of the race was the Russian swimmer Irina Grazdanova who just piped Claire to the silver medal in 30.44.

Kelly’s Paralympian, 17 year old David Hill, also had an outstanding competition. His first event was the (S9) 100m Backstroke where he reaching the final which included most of the top ranking world S9 backstrokes along with the current the world No1 swimmers Jarrett Perry from USA and the world ranked No3 swimmer James Crisp from GB. David had a terrific start and managed to push these senior swimmers all the way to finishing in an impressive and very close, fourth place in a time of 1.08.34 just 0.10 outside his best time which he set just one month earlier at the British Championships. David was also selected to swim in the GB Men’s Team 4x50m Freestyle relay which went on to convincingly win the gold medal in another  storming performance recording a time of 1.57.43. David split time of 27.63 was the fastest of the British quartet and also the competition.

David and Claire having not tapered for this event will continue their hard training schedule in preparation for the World Championship trials which take place in July and August, as well as revising for their AS and A level exams.

Kelly Director of Swimming and GB Team Coach Robin Brew  said “ These are very significant results for both David and Claire and shows that they are capable of produce some very fast swimming even though we are currently in heavy training. This was exactly the result we needed from the excellent World Class racing opportunity – we are going to World Championships later this year in South Africa and will be ready to race hard and fast.”

Claire Cashmore BBC Interview ( Thanks Drew!)

          
David Hill & Claire Cashmore

David Hill in Training


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