Sport
22 August, 2025
Everyone’s in the swim
AUSTRALIAN Paralympic swimmer, Grant ‘Scooter’ Patterson, was a particularly special supporter at the Cairns Central Swimming Day last Saturday, when he arrived to encourage a young swimmer.
Six-year-old Finn Thistlethwaite, who shares the same rare condition as Scooter, was going through his first classification swim for a grade 1.
“It was so awesome, he’s so young but he already has someone to look up to as a mentor,” Cairns Central Swimming (CCS) secretary Jeanette Crumpton said.
Held at the Woree sports and aquatic centre, the swimming day included the first long course transition meet of the season, as well as a junior tadpole come-and-try day.
“We’re really proud of the day,” Ms Crumpton said. “We had 65 under-10 swimmers for the come-and-try day and 130 swimmers in the pool for the long course.”
The youngsters were shown the ropes for “proper starts”, with a line up, an “official” blowing the whistle, the swimmers taking their dive and swimming, to “try out what racing can be like”, she said.
“We also want to encourage the message of learning to swim in youngsters. There’s been a lot of media discussion about the number of children unable to swim at age 15, and up here in the north, we all need to be able to swim.”
The major highlights on the day included Jeannette’s own daughter, Sophie Crumpton, becoming the Queensland para swimming female record holder for her age and grade (100m butterfly, 200m individual medley 15 years.)
“Sophie suffered from a brain tumour when she was two, which left her with right-sided body weakness,” Ms Crumpton said.
“While she uses two arms for freestyle, she only uses one for breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly.”
Sophie, like Finn, was among six swimmers on Saturday who took part in the classifications, which assess physical and intellectual impairment for para swimming.
She and another swimmer were having their grades reviewed, while four others were being classified for the first time.
“We haven’t had a classification day in Cairns since 2021,” Ms Crumpton said.
“This is such a boon, it’s amazing. Normally you have to travel to Brisbane,” she said.
Cairns now has a physiotherapist at the hospital, who is also a qualified international medical classifier, and another physiotherapist, who was a technical classifier. Both are needed to undertake a classification.
“It means you can start competing against world records times, etc, and see how you are training up,” Ms Crumpton said.
The classifications also brought further “fantastic news”, with coach Lei and swimmer Nathan Andronicus both achieving their first Australian Dolphins caps.
The caps mean Lei is now an internationally qualified para swim coach and Nathan can compete in his S14 (intellectual impairment) dolphin grade.
They left Cairns for Singapore on Wednesday, so Nathan can compete at the World Virtus Games, Ms Crumpton said.
And with only seven years before the 2032 Para Olympics, she believed Cairns’ swimmers were right on target.
