Five Reading swimmers made the short journey to compete in the Windsor Junior Graded Meet at the Magnet Pool, Maidenhead on Saturday. The meet gave the group of younger club swimmers an opportunity to improve some of their personal bests in order to qualify for upcoming Meets and every Reading swimmer managed to achieve bests in the majority of their races, securing a total of ten medals in the process.

Outstanding success of the day was James Titchband who bagged a five medal haul of three golds, a silver and a bronze from his six swims in the 12 year age group. James recorded a massive improvement to win gold in the opening 200m freestyle event in 2:34:79 and was equally impressive in swimming under 40 seconds for the first time to record 39:76 and a second gold in the 50m backstroke. He was narrowly beaten in the race to secure his third gold of the day, taking silver in the 50m fly in another best of 40:34. In the 50m breaststroke, his least favourite event of the day, he nevertheless improved to 51.72 before bouncing back to secure his third gold in the 100m IM in yet another best of 1:26:06, followed by bronze in the 50m freestyle in 34.66.

Also in the 12 year age group, Rebecca Lowe improved by over two seconds in her opening 200m freestyle event securing the bronze in 2:44:55. Rebecca followed this by improving her best to 43:29 in the 50m backstroke and narrowly missed a medal by one hundredth of a second in finishing 4th in the 50m fly in another best of 43:10.

In the 11 year age group Katie Hawkins won gold and achieved personal bests in both of her two swims on the day. The 50m backstroke gold was secured in 38:02 and the 50m fly in 39:65 both sub 40 second swims for the first time. The latter event was Reading's most successful as Eleanor Cawthorne, also swimming in the 11 year age group, made it a Reading one-two taking the silver in a much improved best of 42:31. In the 100m IM, her only other swim, Eleanor improved by over 17 seconds to take her second silver of the day in 1:30:36. Alice Hopkins, also swimming in the 11 year age group, made improvements in each of her five swims on the day the most significant of which were a best by seven seconds in recording 45:65 in the 50m backstroke event and other bests of 51.32 in the 50m and 1:39:01 on the 100m IM.