This year’s Finswimming Championships were held on Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7 at the Centro Sportivo in Tenero. Unfortunately, the first day of the meet had to be canceled due to heavy rain and thunderstorms. As a consequence of this, Sunday was packed with events as the organizers decided to integrate most of the events into the program of this second day of competition.
But let’s start at the beginning. Our team left early Saturday morning from Geneva in a bus with direction to Tenero. As it was already raining in Geneva, the motivation hit sort of a low for a short time. And our motivation hat to take another hit as the weather got even worse as we approached Tenero (take a look at the picture on the left taken by the time we arrived at the pool).
Somehow our coaches managed to get us excited anyway and ready to race, no matter what weather we’ll have by the time we would have to step on the blocks. So when we arrived, we all took our fins and went to the pool (at least we would get wet only once today).
Bad news of the day … yes, we did get wet but not because we were to swim on that day. Because of thunderstorms the pool was shut down and all races for the day were cancelled. My parents came down to Tenero to watch me swim in that meet but then again there was nothing to see that day. So I took my parents to Locarno and we spent a wonderful day in the city and ended the day with a pizza for dinner.
That pretty much sum up the first day, so let’s start with the action. Waking up on Sunday morning, the weather was back to normal again and we even got some sun for the day. Without any race on the first day, I had to swim all my 5 races on the same day (had no luck and none of my races got kicked off the program). I started the meet with a 50m AP where usually a final would take place later in the meet but with the situation of the weekend my fourth place was carved in stone. Next race was the 100m FS where I managed to get third place without having a particular good swim.
After a short break, I went back to the shorter distance, this time for the 50m FS. It looked like I wasn’t in the right state of mind when I had to step on the block. Once again I didn’t have a good swim and ended up fourth for the second time of the day. I wasn’t looking forward to the next race on my program, the 200m FS, but after that 50m I wanted to get it right this time and redeem myself. I went out a bit to hard and started to pay for it by the 150m turn but I hang in there and did surprisingly well. Unfortunately, I ended up with another fourth place but it didn’t matter this time as being way up there in the results was already a big surprise.
Last race of the day, 4x100m FS relay. I swam the third leg and almost didn’t see any of our competitors anymore. In the end it was an “easy” win for our team but relays are really important and we were happy to bring home the gold to close the meet.