KENDAL swimming club hosted a Splash Dash Gala at GLL centre to give young swimmers a chance to learn.

The club organised the event to give the younger swimmers a chance to try out their skills and gain more experience at competitive swimming.

From a large number of gold medal winners over 25m came outstanding performances from Harry Hayton who reigned supreme at all four strokes.

He opened his account at butterfly and following a superb start he came out of transition and settled into a steady stroke pattern and slowly pulled clear of his rivals. Keeping the pressure on he drove through the pressure zone for a comfortable win.

He turned to backstroke and again he was in a class of his own.

Away to a perfect start he forced the pace and quickly found his rhythm and injecting more pace he forged ahead. Driving through the pressure zone he hit the finish with a clear eight second lead over Art Whiteley.

At breaststroke these two again came head-to-head and despite Hayton taking an early lead he couldn’t get Whiteley away from his shoulder and so into the pressure zone both swimmers drew on their reserves to decide the issue. In the blanket finish Hayton did just enough to make up a trio of Golds and then went on to take his fourth Gold medal in a blaze of glory, being the fastest of only two swimmers to record a time under 20 seconds in the 25m Freestyle.

Amelia Carlton emerged as another high flyer by emerging with gold medal performances in every one of her events apart from Butterfly.

At backstroke and breaststroke, she had comfortable wins, but had to work hard to hold off the challenges of Margot Darby-Bell in freestyle. Other swimmers were to achieve the double, all winning two Golds each.

Ben Morris opened his account with a well-judged win at backstroke, then had to produce a swim from the gods to win freestyle ahead of Mathew Batstone. Orlaith Treacy was in fine form putting herself on the front at backstroke and freestyle and winning in storming finishes, whilst Kai Stander was as equally as impressive winning Gold at backstroke and breaststroke.

Despite a valiant effort at breaststroke, she had to settle for the silver medal. Eva Roe had similar success with gold medals coming from some dazzling swims at backstroke and breaststroke and with a huge effort added a Silver to her collection for Freestyle. Georgia Solender then got herself in the mix with stunning performances at Butterfly and breaststroke, coming through to take Gold in both events.

Added to these were a whole host of single gold medallists. Poppy Carlton had a superb win in a blanket finish at butterfly as did Margot Darby-Bell. The boys Butterfly saw Yoan Hristov and George Walls also burn off the opposition and triumph over their rivals. Carrying on with their winning ways Gold and minor place medals went to Gracie Hayton, Evie McAvoy, Seren Gore, Alexandra Elvey, Mathew Batstone and Jacob Wilson, demonstrating the depth and talent of the stars of tomorrow.