Golden meet for Comet whizz kid

Jodiesha Kirkpatrick won the 12-year-old girls' age group at the Comet Swimming Club competition. She also won the awards for best all-round 11-and-under swimmer, and top achiever in the 13-and-under age group at the club's prize-giving. 2017 file picture by Liam Clayton

COMET Swimming Club young gun Jodiesha Kirkpatrick aims to carry her record-breaking form from the Auckland Swimming Association junior championships into the Hawke’s Bay-Poverty Bay summer meet, which start this afternoon at the Olympic Pool.

The 11-year-old won gold medals in the 50, 100 and 200 metres breaststroke and 200m freestyle, silver in the 200m individual medley and bronze in the 100m butterfly at the West Wave Aquatic Centre in Henderson.

“Her growing number of club records was also added to,” said Andrew Bull, who, along with fellow Comet coach Bianca Shaw, will be poolside during the next four days as Comet and Enterprise Cars Swim Team take on clubs from Hawke’s Bay.

She broke a 100m freestyle age group record, which had stood since 2010, and took four seconds off the 100 fly and 200 IM records.

“The oldest club record she broke was the 200 freestyle, which had stood since 1996 and was held by Katie Skrine.”

Clubmate Angus Blair also competed in Auckland and produced personal bests in butterfly, backstroke and IM.

Bull said he expected the Aquahawks club from Napier to be the strongest challengers to Comet and Enterprise for the United Trophy, which goes to the club which wins the most titles at the champs.

“There are 260 swimmers competing, which is down on earlier years (400) but up on last year (220),” Bull said.

Josh Taylor-Martin, of Enterprise, said they were looking to be competitive across all events, with their sights on the Junior Aggregate Cup and United Trophy.