THE sponsors of the Ledbury and District ASC Annual Sprint Gala, Mr & Mrs R Parsons, awarded all the winners' prizes with pleasure plus parental pride.

Their son George won the gold medal and set a new club record of 20.07 seconds in the 7/u 25m sprint and his brother Sam won the bronze medal.

Splitting the two and winning the silver medal, was David Middleton, also in a faster time than the existing record.

The 7/u girls record has been held since 1994 but this year all three medallists swam faster with Paige Roberts taking the gold, setting the new record at 19.76 seconds, Lucy Stokes the silver less than three tenths of a second slower, and Patty Holloway the bronze.

In the 8 years event, there was another family double when Annabelle Dereham won the gold and sister Lucy the bronze, squeezing between for the silver medal was Olivia Hunt. With less than a second separating the top three in the boys race, Liam Almond was the winner with Joe Bloxsome 2nd and William Pinnell 3rd.

Winners of this gala need to be proficient in all four strokes as points are awarded for each 50m swim. The Boys junior championships (11/u) was very closely contested, Thomas Stokes won both the backstroke and butterfly races, George Bennion the breaststroke and Arron Almond the frontcrawl.

After an anxious wait whilst the place points were added there was a tie for first place between Arron and Thomas both scoring 15 points. Silver went to George Bennion with nine points, followed by Richard Chandler, seven points. Junior girls winners were, Alison Pudge in the frontcrawl and butterfly races, Charlie Scott Wilson the breaststroke and Heather Farmer the backstroke.

Junior championship winner was Alison with 17 points, Charlie Scott Wilson runner up, 12 points and Annabelle Wilce the bronze medal winner with 11 points.

The senior girls events could not have been closer with both the breaststroke and frontcrawl races having to be decided by the two finishing judges when equal times were recorded by the fastest two. Unfortunately in both events Sarah Bethell was frustrated not to have met her best times and was judged to have lost the touch, firstly to Rachael Lea in the breaststroke and then to Laura West in the frontcrawl.

Laura was the clear winner in both the butterfly and backstroke, giving her a total of 18 points to become the senior champion with Sarah the runner-up with 15.

With eight points each, bronze medals went to Rachael Lea and Chloe Watson.

Top points scorer of the gala was Jamie Dunn taking the senior championship with 19 points, following some tremendous sprints, resulting in three new PBs.

He fought off tough opposition not only from his regular team mates but newcomer from the masters section, Richard Crompton, who was the winner of the breaststroke, whilst Jamie won the backstroke, fly and frontcrawl.

Richard finished runner up with 15 points and Hywel Pothecary was 3rd with 13 points.

Coach Viv Jones said: "This is an important gala for the swimmers as it gives them the opportunity to gain entry times for the Worcester County Sprints at Wolverhampton in September. I'm extremely pleased that we had 57 such times recorded. It's exciting that seven of those were by children who will be too young to compete in September, which obviously indicates great promise for the future."