Hannah excels in British Champs

Hannah Keen performed magnificently in the British Swimming Championships.

The Hastings Seagull talent agonisingly missed out on a place in the final of the women’s 50m freestyle by a mere 0.06 seconds after setting two new personal best times.

Keen, the fastest female freestyle swimmer in Sussex, was ranked 22nd in the UK going into an event at the London Aquatics Centre which doubled up as an Olympic trial and on paper the third fastest in her heat.

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But she won the heat by some margin in a new lifetime best of 26.21 seconds, bettering the 26.73 she set at the Winter South East England Regional Championships in Aldershot late last year to quality.

Keen’s time turned out to be the 15th fastest of the 68 competitors across the nine heats, earning her a place among the 16 semi-finalists by 0.04 seconds.

The 25-year-old was drawn in the second semi-final alongside Fran Halsall, the UK number one, and Commonwealth, World Championship and Olympic medallist and clocked 26.20 to better her heat time by the smallest of margins.

But it wasn’t quite enough to make it through to the eight-strong final because Keen’s time was the ninth fastest across the two semi-finals, albeit only 0.07 seconds off the seventh fastest.

See Friday’s Hastings Observer for the full article.

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