A unique relay went down over the weekend at Stockport’s Life Leisure Grand Central Swimming Pool outside Manchester, England, where Stockport Metro swimmers past and present combined to break the Guinness Book of World Records in the 100 x 50m relay.
Led by 27-year-old Harry Needs, the event raised money for the organization “The Mind Charity”, which helps support people suffering from mental health, raising awareness and understanding of issues related to mental health.’ Needs himself went through self-described ‘personal hardships’ in 2016/17, which resulted him his turning to the water to help him in recovery.
Needs is a former Stockport swimmer himself and now coaches as part of the performance gym leadership for elite athletes, as well as manages the Masters program. He is also the former husband of Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington, who was also on-site to assist with the event.
Said Needs of his desire to spread awareness through action, “I plan to awaken the force against the taboo of mental health in sport by raising a ton load of money for The Mind Charity.’ As of publishing, the relay endeavor raised 156% of its original monetary target, bringing in an estimated equivalent of $4,000 USD.
The time to beat was 46:38 and the 100 swimmers of Stockport crushed that with their final mark of 43:32.
Below you can see some of the action from the event, highlighting the fact that ‘Swimming really is family at its best.’
A list of all participating swimmers (and now World Record holders!) can be found here.
Footage courtesy of Stockport Metro.
Great effort for a great cause! Well done to everyone involved 🤙
That is how swimming has to be popularized. FINA cannot gather even half of this number of swimmers for its well paid events. Take some money from this corrupted so called “champions series” and give it to these 100 brave hearts.
Well done everyone, fantastic cause. Great swims.
Are there splits anywhere?
Were there really 100 swimmers or some of them swam more than one time?
There were 100 swimmers, each person had to register, it had to be checked as you lined up to swim with the correct Officials and videoed in full for record and proof.
You can look at the list posted and see the 100 swimmer’s names and their order.
That averaging about 26.1. Pretty fast actually
Especially when you consider it was SCM. That’s like getting 100 swimmers to average 23.5 in SCY. The previous record’s average was 27.9, so they were averaging 1.8 seconds faster per leg. That’s pretty insane