The British and English Summer Swimming Championships were held at Ponds Forge, Sheffield over two recent weekends.

Week one saw Team Utmost Isle of Man wwimmer Joel Watterson represent the island, with fellow Manxmen Harry Robinson and Peter Allen representing their school and university teams, Mount Kelly School and Stirling University respectively.

With less than a week between returning from the Island Games in Guernsey and heading to Sheffield, the turnaround was always going to be challenging.

But the three swimmers proved that their resilience in multiple summer events is becoming a trademark, with all performing to their usual high standards.

The opening week saw a few showdowns between the three men, with Robinson and Watterson going head-to-head in the 50m freestyle. The latter emerged the victor and in doing so qualified for the men’s open final where he placed ninth in a world-class field.

Watterson then went solo in the 100m freestyle and again made the open British final in which he touched home eighth and broke the 100m Manx record in a time of 50.60s.

This further extended his dominance in the event: he now holds the island’s fastest 10 swims to date ahead of team-mate Robinson, although the latter is not shy in letting Watterson know his intent to catch him which makes for intriguing racing between the two.

Allen had his own battles in racing the 100m and 200m fly events in times only marginally outside his lifetime best, acknowledging that these races set him up for the upcoming season where he intends to lay his case early to qualify for the next Commonwealth Games.

Also competing at the British Championships was Ella Justice representing Mount Kelly before flying out to Trinidad and Tobago with the Commonwealth Youth Games team.

Justice swam close to personal bests in the 50 and 200m backstroke events and finally cracked that personal best marker in the 100m backstroke on the front end of the relay that she represented her school in the final and placed sixth overall in the 14-16 year 4x100 medley team.

The final day of week one saw all three men head into the 50m fly event and Watterson again extended his lead at the forefront of the Manx record sheet with a heat swim good enough for fourth seed into the evening’s final in a new record time of 24.44.

This knocked a huge 0.3 seconds off his previous mark which at this level is a massive drop, so it was even a surprise to national coach Lee Holland when the performance in the final went faster again to 24.22 seconds.

This is less that 0.2 of a second over the record he set in the short course (25m) pool at the NSC the weekend before travelling to Sheffield.

This shows a massive level of potential in the event and Holland said: ‘I’m delighted for the guys in how they’ve raced here this week and for Joel to break three records out of three events - and each time make the men’s senior final - is amazing.

‘We’re now chasing times that could see Joel challenging for places in Commonwealth finals in the not-so-distant future!’

The second report from the British and English Summer Swimming Championships

will appear in next week’s

Isle of Man Examiner.