Catzel, Aaron master Oz swimming champs
VETERAN swimmer Jorian Catzel starred at the recent Australian National Masters Swimming Championships in Sydney, picking up six medals in a stellar performance.
VETERAN swimmer Jorian Catzel starred at the recent Australian National Masters Swimming Championships in Sydney, picking up six medals in a stellar performance.
Clive Aaron was the other stand- out with three medals.
Catzel and Aaron were two of eight Jewish swimmers, including Rachelle Buchbinder and Mark Silver from Melbourne, Daniella Goodridge and Rozanne Green from Sydney, and Malcolm Levin and Trevor Wainstein from Perth, who competed at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre.
They make up the masters swim team representing Australia at the Maccabiah Games in Israel in July.
Catzel, who is from Sydney and raced in the 65-69 age group, picked up two gold medals in the 50m and 100m backstroke events, two silver medals in the 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley, and two bronze medals in the 100m butterfly and 200m backstroke.
“I am like a good wine – I improve with age,” Catzel told The AJN.
“With the Maccabiah Games coming up in July, I embarked on a serious training program, which included a combination of squad training and gym work with increasing intensity with the Australian National Masters Swimming Championships in mind.
“The results this year have been the best I have ever recorded in a tournament, but I still believe that with continued hard work and training, I still have more petrol in my tank.
It has certainly motivated and inspired me to train even harder to do my very best in Israel.”
Meanwhile, Aaron, who swam in the 55-59 age group, won the gold medal in the 100m breaststroke, silver in the 200m breaststroke and bronze in the 50m breaststroke.
“It was pretty satisfying,” Aaron said.
“I swam personal bests in the freestyle event as well, and I was probably more pleased with those [times] than my breaststroke swims.”
Several other members of the team swam personal best times as well, and used the championships to get top-level racing practice under their belts.
“It was the prefect meet, because it’s probably the toughest competition you can swim in in Australia,” Aaron said.
“So it was the perfect race competi- tion and experience and because we’re from all over Australia, we had the opportunity to get everyone together and enjoy some team bonding.
“We’ll now keep training and work on the finer points like diving and turning … and it’s going to be challenging once we get over there [to Israel].”
Ashley Shenker
Photo: Anthony Goodridge
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