City of Sunderland swimmer, Matthew Wylie, was one of just six para-swimmers selected to represent Great Britain at the European Junior Swimming Championships held in Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Swimming in this prestigious event for the first time, seventeen year old Matthew, without a doubt, rose to the occasion becoming double European Champion in the 50m and 100m MC (multi classification) freestyle events.
Matthew began the competition with a personal best (PB) on Day One of the championships, finishing 6th in the heat of the MC 100m backstroke event in 1:13.67 seconds (589 points). He then swam in the final where he also finished in 6th place.
Day Two saw him swim in his best event, the 100m freestyle where he dominated both the heat and final finishing in first place in both to claim his first European title.   Matthew’s time in the heat of 59.53 seconds equated to 802 points and his time in the final of 59.92 seconds gave him 786 points. He finished ahead of Ryan Nicholls and Craig Harris to make it a clean medal sweep for Great Britain.
On Days Three and Four, Matthew competed in the 100m breaststroke and 100m butterfly events where he finished ninth in both, achieving 394 points and a new PB of 1:31.53 minutes in the breaststroke and 391 points, 1:21.00 minutes in the butterfly. GB swimmer, Craig Harris, took gold in both events.
Matthew finished the championships in style, finishing first in both the heats and finals of the MC 50m freestyle event. He achieved 742 points and a time of 27.76 in the heat and then bettered this in the final with 771 points and a time of 27.40 seconds. Once again it was a clean sweep for Great Britain with Ryan Nicholls and Craig Harris finishing second and third respectively.
Matthew helped Team GB para-swimmers achieve 16 medals of which eight were gold a fantastic result for Great Britain’s para swimmers and of course for Matthew.