On a freezing winter morning, the OUSC 2nds woke up ready to win Varsity. The metres had been swum, the alcohol ban (mostly) followed, and it was now time to show the tabs what we were made of. First up was the 100IM: Katherine McKane …
With a strong team, and a lot of training under their belts, the Oxford Blues team were very excited, and confident leading up to the 127th Varsity match on Saturday 26th February 2022. A few threats of COVID and some injuries did risk putting the …
BUCS Long Course was the return of Long Course racing for OUSC after the 2 year covid pandemic.
The weekend saw a fantastic weekend of swimming, with 12 Blues Times swims, 18 PBs, 3 Club Records broken and one person’s special 10 year anniversary of swimming at BUCS.
Storm Eunice was not the only storm hitting Sheffield on Friday 18th February. The Men’s 4×100 freestyle relay smashed their heats, safely securing a spot in the B Final and narrowly missing out on the OUSC Club Record.
Saturday Morning saw Sophie Lawrence and Max Anderson Loake in the 200 Freestyle. Both dug deep and started the day with PBs and Blues Times.
Louisa Zolkiewski’s 10 year BUCS anniversary started with an epic 50 backstroke. It was a club record, blues time and PB all in one. She swam the race with style, finishing in a time of 31.76 and coming away from the race with a selection of wonderful photos taken by the BUCS official photographer.
Up in the 50 back was David Pugh and Jackson Spry, both having fantastic swims. David was back in the pool, later in the day this time swimming a 200 Back. Another brilliant swim from David, securing his first ever Blues Time and Personal Best swim.
Zoe Faure Beaulieu, Nick Lim and Emma Madden were up in the 50 breast. Zoe came away from her swim with her first Blues Time of the season, and a British Championships Qualifying time. Nick Lim smashed his race, getting a personal best. Nick Lim and Zoe Faure Beaulieu both also had fantastic swims on the 100 breast on the Sunday.
Andrew Hong braved it on the long course 400 IM. Going out strong in the Blues Time for the 100 fly, Andrew showed his strength of fitness finishing the race in a time just outside his PB.
Deryn Cressey-Rodgers and Louisa Zolkiewski were up in the 50 Free. After Louisa’s fantastic 50 back earlier in the day, we were expecting great things and great things were, in fact, delivered with a second swim under the Blues Time in one day. Deryn’s swim was also a personal best. The men, Declan Pang and Matty Johnson were up next in the 50 Free and both swam personal best swims, with Matty swimming 14.3% faster than he has ever done before. Declan licked the blues time.
The day finished with the B Final of the Men’s 4×100 Relay. The Men: Andrew Hong, Matty Johnson, Declan Pang, and Max Anderson Loake, had a cracking race, finishing 8th overall, and improving on their time from the heat.
Sunday morning started with Sophie Lawrence and Andrew Hong both stepping up to the 200 fly. Both finished just outside of their PBs in Blues Time swims, and Andrew secured a spot in the final.
Matty and Declan were up in the 100 free. Declan was fast off the blocks, but even faster in the second 50 and Matty had fun.
Max Underwood won his heat in the 200 IM in a PB swim with a very strong breaststroke leg.
Max Anderson Loake also smashed his heat in the 400 Free. Swimming a PB swim and another Blues Time and achieving his first OUSC Club record.
One record wasn’t enough for Louisa Zolkiewski. Swimming 50 fly in a time of 29.90, she smashed the club record in a PB swim attaining her third blues time of the weekend.
The last race of the weekend for OUSC was Andrew Hong’s 200 Fly final. Andrew went out strong, and came back even stronger in a PB time of 2:06.65, finishing 5th overall. A fantastic result.
Well done to everyone who swam, very promising looking forward to a huge shoe-ing at the Rosenblatt Pool next weekend!!
On Wednesday 2nd February the Blues Team travelled back to the Surrey Sports Park for the Phase 2 of the British University Swimming League. This competition was the head-to-head divisional final against the University of Surrey, Oxford Brookes and Brunel University. The team from Oxford …
On Monday 3rd January 2022, 18 swimmers and Zichen met at Gatwick Airport to escape the UK for a week of swimming in Lanzarote. Unfortunately the team was slightly depleted having lost a couple of swimmers to COVID isolations. The week-long training camp involved 20 …
Michaelmas has seen an exciting change to the traditional OUSC Season Schedule this year. The Blues team competed in the British University Swimming League (BUSL), and had duel matches against Brunel, Oxford Brookes and the University of Surrey.
With over 50 Universities competing this year we are thrilled to be taking part in this sprint-based league. Phase 1 of the league is three duel matches against the other teams in your local conference, and the points are carried forward to the Championship gala which will be held in Hilary Term.
Our first match was in week one and was unfortunately held virtually against Brunel. This meant we had to compete in our pool at Iffley Road, and they raced in their pool. Despite it being the first week of the season, and most swimmers shad been out of the pool for a significant period of time before this due to COVID, this did not stop the Blues finishing 12 points ahead of Brunel and taking an early lead in their local conference.
Round two was the local derby against Oxford Brookes. Held at the end of October on home turf for the Blues team, the competition was heated up by both teams bringing along a second, non-scoring team to race as well. This was the very first time the new freshers could race for OUSC against another team face-to-face, and the first time the returning swimmers were against another team in real life since Varsity 2020.
There were some very exciting swims, with Jonathan Rutter breaking both the Oxford University and the British University Swimming League records on the 100 IM with a time of 56.69, and Andrew Wilson breaking the British University Swimming League Record for the 100 Breast in a time of 1:01.34, and both these swimmers being the first to achieve Blues Times for the 2021-22 Season.
Despite it being a very close gala, the Blues came out on top, 20 points ahead of Brookes, meaning they maintained their status at the top of the conference league.
Finally in 9th week the last competition of Phase 1 was an away duel against the University of Surrey. Despite our gala only being scored against Surrey, there were also King’s College London, University College London, Kent and Sussex competing in their duels at the same time which gave the Blues swimmers even more exposure to racing other teams in the preparation for the Varsity Match against Cambridge in February.
It was a very tough duel, Surrey put up an invincible team, but despite the loss there were some good takeaways from the Oxford team. Eva Ponting swam a season’s best in the 100 Fly, Spencer Williams and Ellie Browne and the Women’s 4×50 Freestyle Relay all dropped time from the match vs Brookes a few weeks earlier, notably the relay dropping 5 seconds!
The loss to Surrey has left Oxford in a strong second place in their local conference, a very strong position to be in looking forward to the Championship Match in February which determines whether they qualify for the National Final later in the season.
Well done to everyone who has swam in the British University Swimming League and look-out for updates on the Championship Match on our Instagram page!
At the end of 6th week, swimmers from the Blues and Dolphins teams travelled up to Sheffield for the return of BUCS Short Course on the weekend. OUSC had an impressive weekend with 3 club records being broken, 7 finals, 10 Blues Times, 4 lucky …
On Saturday 4th November, the Oxford Blues and Dolphins hosted teams from Oxford Brookes, Warwick, Nottingham and Bristol in the annual Friendly Gala at the Rosenblatt Pool, Iffley Road. Having been cancelled in 2020, this was the first proper competition for both the Oxford Blues …
The annual Open-Water Varsity Mob Match against Cambridge is usually held in Henley, racing the 2.1km classic upstream course, but with COVID and the dates for the Henley Classic not working for either team, this year the race was held at the London Victoria Dock. So, on Saturday 4th September, 10 swimmers from Oxford made their way down to London to take on Cambridge at the 1.5km Dock2Dock race in just their swimming costumes (no wetsuits!). Despite some threatening clouds, the weather, fortunately, held out for the race !!
This was the first time the Dock2Dock had held an Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Event. The race was judged by a combined time of the first 5 swimmers (of which 2 swimmers must be female). In true dark blue style, several swimmers from the Oxford team took to their legs at the start of the race and got an early lead from the Cambridge swimmers. Despite some issues with sighting and sticking to the route, the dark blues won with a combined time of 122:54 (over 20 minutes faster than Cambridge’s combined time of 143:23).
Congratulations to all swimmers involved, Oxford had some great results. A special mention goes to Sophie Lawrence for winning the Oxford-Cambridge race in a time of 22:33, posting the fastest women’s time over 1.5km at the event and the third-fastest time overall out of the 200 swimmers competing at the Dock2Dock event. Andrew Hong and Bertie Ansell also made it into the top 10 in the 1.5km race coming 7th and 9th in times of 23:52 and 25:11 respectively.
The important open-water skill of drafting led the Oxford team to victory, with Joseph Read, Spencer Williams and Robyn McQueen all finishing within touching distance of each other in times of 25:21, 25:57 and 25:59 respectively.
All in all, despite the cold water, it was a great race, and well done to Cambridge for being such great competition and to our Oxford swimmers: Max Underwood, Zoe Faure-Beaulieu, Claudia Murray and Afrah Shibu for also posting excellent results.
This year, a friendly varsity was held virtually at the Rosenblatt Pool. Iffley Road, Oxford and the Parkside Pool, Cambridge respectively. It was held on the 23rd of June for Oxford and the 25th of June for Cambridge. Despite the match being friendly, both teams …