Ashby Snares Silver Medal in Australian Youth Olympics

Hamilton teenager Bradlee Ashby gained swimming’s first medal on the second day of competition in the pool at the Australian Youth Olympic Games in Sydney today.

The 17 year old from the Fairfield club has won a silver medal in the 400m individual medley at the Sydney Olympic Aquatic Centre.

Ashby established a new national age group record. His time of 4:27.31 was 1.5 seconds inside the previous record that he set last month in Queensland.

He had to dig deep to gain his silver medal after coming from nearly two seconds down to edge out Canada’s Evan White.

“I thought after the heats that a medal was possible,” Ashby said. “I was still a fair way behind after the breaststroke but I knew I had a better freestyle. I had to dig pretty deep in the final 50m though.

“I knew I could go a lot faster tonight after the heats where I laid back quite a bit in the freestyle to save myself for tonight.

“It was amazing on the podium. I felt proud and very thankful for everything.”

There was added reward for Ashby with his family watching on.

“It was great. I got to speak with them after and they were over the moon.”

He has the 200m backstroke tomorrow and the 200m individual medley on Sunday.

“Knowing I can do more than I necessarily thought I could do has given me some real confidence now.”

Three other New Zealand swimmers made finals with Sam Perry (St Peters) seventh int he 100m freestyle, North Canterbury’s Natasha Lloyd sixth in the 100m breaststroke, Cameron Blair (Kiwi West, Palmerston North) seventh in the 400m medley.

Best was the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay that played fourth with the women’s combination seventh.

NZ Results, finals:

100m freestyle: Sam Perry (St Peters, Waikato) 52.09, 7.

100m breaststroke: Natasha Lloyd (North Canterbury) 1:11.47, 6

400m individual medley: Ryo Fujimoto (JPN) 4:21.61, 1; Bradley Ashby (Fairfield, NZL) 4:27.31, 2 (NZ Record); Evan White (CAN) 4:27,63, 3. Also: Cameron Blair (Kiwi West) 4:34.12, 7.

4x200m freestyle relay: NZL 8:32.11, 6.

4x200m freestyle relay men: NZL 7:45.54, 4 (Sam Perry, Julian Weir, Ted Taylor, Carter Edgecombe).

Full details: www.swimmingnz.org.nz

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