Gold Medal Mel Brings Irish Age Groups To A Close

Melanie Houghton (Aer Lingus) continued her winning habit as she won Sunday's Sprint event, the 50m Butterfly. The sprint specialist was somewhat of a "Gold Medal Mel" this week as she won the 50m and 100m Freestyle, as well as the 50m and 100m Butterfly. In Sunday's 50m Butterfly she held off a strong challenge from UCD's Shauna O'Brien touching in 27.56, with Shauna finishing in 27.78. Natasha Pollock of Lisburn completed the podium for the girls 50m Butterfly. In the Men's 50m Butterfly it was Larne Swimmer Conor Bines who stole the show with a 25.31 to take the Gold ahead of Galway's David O'Sullivan (25.50) and Tallaght's Brendan Hyland (25.59).

Clodagh Flood won the Gold Medal she has been looking for in the Girls 400m Freestyle. The Tallaght native had 2 bronze and 2 silver medals so far but there was no stopping her in the 400m Freestyle as she put in a great second 200m to win in a time of 4.24.16. Portmarnock's Therese Corry was second with an impressive 4.26.85 and the bronze medal went to Mary Kate McDowell from Ards.

UCD swimmer David Prendergast was back to winning ways today having already won the 50m Backstroke and been part of UCD's winning 4x100m Freestyle Relay, he won Sunday's showcase event the 100m Freestyle. David's time of 51.92 was enough to hold off Tallaght's Brendan Hyland (52.37) and Ennis swimmer Bernard Cahill (53.40).

The competition was brought to a close with another impressive performance from Galway Swimming Club as they seem to have been on the podium every time they swim this week. They won the Girls 4x200m Freestyle as Kate Finn, Dairne Ryan, Kate Kavanagh and Keena Walsh combined for an excellent time of 8.46.22. The race didn't finish at first though, as there was an exciting battle for second between Aer Lingus and Sundays Well SC. The Aer Lingus girls managed to pull through to take the Silver Medal in 8.52.04, out touching the Sundays Well girls by just 0.28seconds.

The atmosphere at this week's competition was one of the best seen in Irish Swimming. Olympian Melanie Nocher played her part on the mic as she commentated throughout the week and the crowd were great as they cheered throughout. A massive thank you goes out to all who helped make the 2014 Irish Age Groups & Summer Open a success. Without the help of volunteers, officials, clubs, parents and the staff at the National Aquatics Centre & National Sports Campus the competition would not have been so successful.

Irish swimmers will be in action this week as a strong group of 12 young swimmers left Ireland this morning to compete at the Canadian Age Group Championships from 23rd to 28th July, while there will also be swimmers competing in Portugal at the Portuguese Open. The Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games Swim Team will also be in action from 23rd July until 4th August as The Commonwealth Games kick off in Glasgow. The swimming doesn't stop there with seven swimmers representing Ireland at European LC Swimming & Open Water Championships 24th-27th August in Berlin, Germany.