Scotland’s Kathleen Dawson Hammers Out New 200 Back National Record

2016 BRITISH SUMMER CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Tuesday July 26th-Sunday July 31st
• Ponds Forge International Sports Centre – Sheffield, England
• Prelims – 9 am local (4 am EDT); Finals –4:30 pm local (11 am EDT)
• Psych Sheets
• Live Streaming
• Results

While competing on day 4 of the 2016 British Summer Championships in Sheffield, Kathleen Dawson further established herself as the reigning Scottish backstrocking queen. Already owning the Scottish National Record in the women’s 50m and 100m distances, representing the only woman from her nation ever to have dipped beneath the minute threshold in the latter, Dawson also lowered her own 200m backstroke mark in a big way tonight.

Headed into the meet at Ponds Forge, Dawson’s personal best was the 2:11.81 she threw down just in May of this year. She shaved just over half a second from that outing in heats this morning, clocking a new national record in a time of 2:11.30. But the 18-year-old had other plans for the final where she wound up obliterating that mark with her first sub-2:10 swim ever. 2:09.62 is what Dawson produced to win gold tonight and register a shiny new Scottish National Record.

Review of her race breakdown below reveals how Dawson negative split the race. Although the mark falls outside the top 25 times in the world, it is still a significant improvement for the swimmer who has a lengthy career ahead of her and plenty of time to chase Gemma Spofforth’s British NR of 2:06.66 that’s stood since 2009.

Splits for Dawson’s 2:09.62 NR swim:

31.53/33.80 (1:05.33)
33.04/31.25 (1:04.29)

Dawson has recently joined the University of Stirling training group, home to Scottish stand-outs Ross Murdoch, Duncan Scott, Craig Benson and others. She is already targeting the 2018 Commonwealth Games for her next breakout competition.