Catch interviews with two of the three newly-minted British National Record Holders from Day 1 of the ASA National Winter Meet taking place in Sheffield through the weekend.
Ben Proud
The men’s 50m freestyle record tonight, as Plymouth Leander’s Ben Proud rocked a sub-21 outing of 20.74 to get the win. In topping the podium, Proud lowered a long-standing national record, that of a 21.13 from Mark Foster held since way back in 2001. For Proud, his thoughts after the race included, “I’m really pleased. This morning I swam a 22 so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect tonight but I felt really fast and I was just trying to think about getting all the detail right. As soon as I nailed my turn, I knew it was going to be a fast swim but I didn’t think it would be sub 21 seconds.”
Imogen Clark
Another British record victim came in the form of the women’s 50m breaststroke, where 16-year-old Imogen Clark stormed to the wall in a final time of 30.02. The previous mark was another long-standing record, that of the 30.31 held by Zoe Baker since 2002. 30.66 was Clark’s swiftest time headed into this meet, so the youngster fired on all cylinders to get het job done tonight. Of note, Clark is a member of Great Britain’s Podium Potential High Performance Squad.