Devon Relays

Exeter City Swimming Club downed Plymouth Leander as the top county relay club as they stormed to the top
of the medal table at the 2009 Devon Relay Championships with a string of outstanding team performances.
With an overall medal haul of 9 gold, 5 silver and 2 bronze from 18 events the city club surged to the top ahead
of Plymouth Leander (8 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze) and Barnstaple (3, 1, 6). Ten clubs medalled throughout the 20
events with only the first three winning a race, and on top of coming out on top in the number of gold medals
Exeter were well out in front on the overall medal count.



Starting the morning in fine fashion was the 9/10 yr girls medley relay of Rhiannon Loveman, Tina
Song-Ashdown, Georgia Cotterill and Amy Linnington in leading the race from start to finish winning by an 8
sec. margin. Later in the session they dominated the freestyle relay in similar fashion taking the title 4 sec. clear
of 2nd place.



The standard had been set and the girl’s teams continued to romp home in every event of the morning. The
13/14 team of Helen Smith, Amy Cole, Jess Twose and Maria Griss were involved in the two of the most
exciting races of the day, but remained tough to capture both the medley and freestyle events over rivals
Plymouth and Barnstaple by narrow margins of 0.2 sec. and 0.4 sec.



The 15/16 team of Connie Fearnley, Becca Hitt, Sally Whybra and Harriet Stevens emulated the younger girls
in dominating both of their events from start to finish with the wins never being in doubt and eventual winning
margins of 8 sec. and 3.5 sec.



A relatively inexperienced 9/10 yr boys team of James Lee, Luca Lavric, Freddie Fearnley and Liam White
were in the picture for a medal the entire length of the medley relay and captured the bronze much to the delight
of the whole team. James, Freddie and Liam were joined by James Warnsley for the freestyle event and again
were in contention for the whole race, just missing on more podium honours with a 4th place finish by a mere
0.7 sec.

Links

Devon County ASA

ASA SouthWest

British Swimming