Tui Shipston Best In All Strokes

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 19

Tui Shipston Best In All Strokes

rpHE amazing Tui Shipston A finds herself in the unique position of being the theoretical winner of all the Canterbury senior and junior swimming titles this season.

This month she erased the last of Miss S. A. Nicholson’s grand records from the book and now holds all the provincial women’s and girls’ marks in butterfly, backstroke and medley, as well as four of the six freestyle marks.

This, theoretically, is the age of stroke specialists in swimming, but Miss Shipston is proving the theorists wrong.

In perfecting her technique in the four strokes in pursuit of her goal in the medley she has eclipsed the deeds of Misses Nicholson, L. Cox, L. A. Norman, W. Dale and J. Reid—all of them national champions or recordholders.

These successes in the individual strokes have served to illustrate the tremendous ability she brings to the testing medley event In

her first outing in the medley this season she shattered the New Zealand women’s and girls’ marks for 220 yd by more than four seconds.

At this distance she is now only B.ssec outside the world record, which is held jointly by Misses E. Tanner (Canada) and K. Y. Muir (South Africa). By national championship time in February she should be even closer to this figure.

In the gruelling 440 yd medley, Miss Shipston provided spirited opposition for the champion and recordholder, Miss M. M. Macrae (Auckland), at last season’s national meeting. It was not until the freestyle leg that Miss Macrae drew ahead. This season, in the light of Miss Shipston’s dramatic improvement in the front crawl, Miss Macrae will find victory hard to obtain.

Miss Shipston’s coach, Mr J. Breward, has long held the belief that his protege’s greatest chances for success lay in the medley. With every swim Miss Shipston is proving him right