Sunday’s Alan Doyle Memorial Sprint Meet took place at Hemel Sports Centre pool. 11 clubs and hundreds of swimmers attended in memory of former Head Coach Alan Doyle, a loved figure in swimming regionally and beyond, who died suddenly this time last year in his 50s of a heart attack. It had quite an effect on George and he vowed to ‘swim for Alan’ and help raise funds for the British Heart Foundation. At the end of the meet, there were 3 new overall trophies: Most Improved Boy, Most Improved Girl, and generously donated and presented by the legendary former GB coach Terry Davies himself (father of Sharron Davies the GB swimmer & BBC presenter) the Alan Doyle Memorial Trophy to an HHSC swimmer for outstanding performance. Suffice to say, George did not win the Girls’ trophy but somehow claimed the other two. The Most Improved Boy trophy was across all age groups (9 yrs right up to 55-yr-old masters!), calculated by averaging out time improvement across all events – race time achieved against entry times on the submitted forms. As one example, George’s entry time (submitted 2 months ago) for 100 IM was 1:35.47, but his time at the meet was 1:27.41, which is 4 secs inside the County Consideration Time. Very well done George!
