School Sport Ambassador swims to World Championship glory

Thursday, 19 August

The Youth Sport Trust would like to congratulate School Sport Ambassador Sascha Kindred and the rest of the British Disability Swimming Team who continue to add to the already impressive  gold medal tally at the IPC Swimming World Championships in Eindhoven.

Sascha, who was defending his world SM6 200m Individual Medley title, went into the final positive after having had a strong qualifying run.  A great start in the butterfly leg helped him take the lead and saw him chasing down his own world record.

Keeping his cool Sascha touched home in a time of 2:42.18 to take home gold and beat his previously set record.

Speaking after the race Sascha said, "There are a lot of youngsters coming through who are swimming really well so I was a bit nervous. But I swam well in the morning and felt good so was confident going into the race.

"I'm ecstatic to win in a new World Record time and with only 2 years to go now till London, who knows what might happen there," he added.

Former UK School Games champion and Olympic gold medalist Eleanor Simmonds  is also part of the successful squad, collecting three titles from the first four days event. She knocked four seconds off her world record in the S6 400m Freestyle on day two, took the S6 50m Freestyle on day three despite going into the final ranked second and ended the fourth day with gold in the SM6 200m Individual Medley.

The championships run until the 21 August 2010.

Sascha Kindred is a School Sport Ambassador for the Youth Sport Trust, visiting schools to see the developments in school sport an PE, encouraging more young people to take part.  He has won a total of six Paralympic, nine World and eleven European Championship gold medals and has represented Great Britain in four Paralympic Games thus far. He currently holds a number of British, European, Paralympic and world records.