Congratulations to Alan Luckhurst who won his first trophy at Serpentine SC when he won the Bill Maggs trophy over 220 yards in waters of a certain temperature on Saturday 4 April 2014.
The trophy was presented by Michael Wood. Bill Maggs was a longtime member of the club who passed away in the 1960s. And to keep things in the Serpentine family a link was dicovered between Maggs and current member Tony Cleaver. Not quite seven degrees of separation, but Maggs who worked as a "gentleman's gentleman" was a butler to Jenny Cleaver's grandmother.
In the swimming races, Rod Newing won race one, but it was the race within that race which was also interesting. In the days preceding the race, email chatter had been started by Brian Thomas on the club chat group asking for Robin the water temperature taker to issue his temperature tweets "in Celsius (Centigrade for those of us still using old money) as well as Fahrenheit." to quote Brian. And Robin, in his 70s - years and not Fahrenheit, felt that doing tweets in two temperatures was beyond his energy capabilities. Perhaps it was sporting psychology by Robin? For, when the race commenced, Brian 'the arrow' Thomas had a built a lead on Robin on the first length. The final 40 yards saw Hunter Coddington overtake Brian to take second place with Brian settling for third place. One wonders whether Robin has one more English Channel relay in his system?
In race two, Alan Luckhurst finished ahead of Jame Norton, Dani Lobo and Stuart Bowman. Great swim Alan.
Footnote from Brian Thomas:
"A bit of history. When I joined the club in 1967 both Fahrenheit and Centigrade were recorded on the very same small blackboard that currently hangs inside the changing room door. You will observe that CEN and FAH are printed on the board ready for each of the two readings and there was never any issue with recording them both. For whatever reason in the early 90s the temperature was only written up in Fahrenheit. This was raised at the AGM of 1997 and the meeting agreed (by a vote, though this was not recorded in the minutes) that both readings be written on the board. I cannot really see the issue, unless we have a thermometer than reads in Fahrenheit only."
[John Tierney]
