Great Yarmouth’s Jack Utting and Isaac Kirby continued to impress over recent weekends at the East Region British Age group championships at the UEA Sportspark, Norwich.

The two City of Norwich swimmers, performed well despite the ongoing intense training in their preparations for the national championships in July. The event was to see 10 of the 12 available age group records taken. in some of the best competitive Jack and Isaac secured five golds, one bronze and seven regional group records between them.

The first weekend opened with Jack in his preferred event of the 100m backstroke. The heats saw him in good form recording a time almost a second outside of his current best set back in March at the London Olympic trials, but sufficient to secure the first record of the championships taking two seconds from the existing age group record. The final was to bring Jack his first gold of the competition in a tight finish. The second session on the Saturday had Jack and his rivals in a closely fought heat for positions ready for finals later in the afternoon.

Jack won the final by over one and a half seconds and setting a new regional record by the same amount.

Sunday brought Isaac into 200m breaststroke action. He dominated his heats and won the final by over 12 seconds. With the gold and new regional age record secured, he had dropped the existing record by an impressive seven seconds and set a new junior men’s regional record.

The following weekend saw both open the morning session in the 200 m individual medley with Isaac going into the final ranked second and Jack in fourth. In a hard-fought final both improved on their qualifying times. Despite taking two and a half seconds off of his pb, Isaac was into third place and took the bronze and Jack came in fifth. In the afternoon Isaac dominated the 100m breaststroke heats and pulled out another pb in the finals for gold and a new regional record. The time gave Isaac his second junior men’s regional record.

The final day’s competition brought Jack back for the butterfly. In a strong heat the first four were separated by less than three quarters of a second. In the final Jack took the lead by almost half a body length from the dive and held this into the turn. He turned well and fought off a strong challenge to take his third gold and another championship record by almost another second.

The afternoon session closed with Jack awarded the regional age group bronze overall.

Jack and Isaac are both Link swimmers with the City of Norwich Club and Great Yarmouth Swimming Club.