Two Byron swimmers bobbing up

TWO Byron schoolgirls have out-swum Mullumbimby’s Olympic champion Petria Thomas at their local carnival.

Gabi Kay, of Byron Bay Public School, shaved more than a second off Ms Thomas’s record in the 50-metre breaststroke, while her friend Nicole Dorfer, of Ocean Shores Public School, beat Thomas’s 50-metre freestyle time by 0.22 seconds.

Both records had been set by Petria Thomas 25 years ago at the same district carnival in Mullumbimby.

Gabi, who dreams of one day representing Australia in the Olympics, said she was ‘pretty excited’ when she found out she’d broken the record.

“I only knew when I asked my teacher if I could see the record sheet,” she said.

It was a wonderful pay-off for the 11-year-old, who trains five times a week and is often up at 5.30am to swim.

She started swimming competitively at the age of eight and is a member of the Byron Bay Swimming Club and the Byron Bay Surf Club. She says her two coaches, Adrian Phillipic and Brian Buckley, are a great help.

Gabi’s mum Jo, who gets up early to train alongside her daughter, said it had been a great year for Gabi – ‘the best by far’.

Gabi’s friend, Nicole Dorfer, who broke the freestyle record on the same day, is less ambitious about her swimming future, but equally happy about her achievement,

She said she swims for the exercise, the friends and ‘the fun of it’, although breaking a record by an Olympic star is an added bonus.

“I felt really excited, it was a really good record to beat,” she said.

Adding to the honour was a personal congratulations from Petria Thomas’s mum, who attended the carni-val. “She was really nice,” Nicole said.