Former Wear Valley club member Julie Fort (Newcastle) is included in the England side which competes against teams from 15 other countries in the Millennium Commonwealth Youth Games in Edinburgh this weekend, writes Eric Wilkinson.

The teams consist of seven male and seven female swimmers who between them have to cover the full programme of events. Julie has been selected for the 50m, 100m and 200m backstroke races. At the recent national championships, in Sheffield two weeks ago, she finished third in the women's 50m backstroke and seventh in the 100m backstroke.

The England assistant team manager is Ian Wilson, the former Sunderland swimmer who won a silver medal in the men's 1500m freestyle event at the European championships and also competed in the Olympic and Commonwealth games. The chief coach is Dawn Peart (Newcastle).

The British Olympic team, comprising 41 swimmers, announced this week for the games in Sydney next month, includes three local competitors in Sue Rolph (Newcastle), 200m individual medley, 50m and 100m freestyle, Nicola Jackson (Derwentside), who hails from Richmond, 4x200m freestyle relay team, and Vicki Horner (Stockport), a former member of the Newburn and Derwentside clubs whose parents still live on Tyneside. She is named as a reserve for the 4x200m freestyle team and may well swim in the heats. The assistant team manager is Brenda Bland (Hartlepool), and Ian Oliver (Newcastle) is on the coaching staff.

The ASA's national long-distance age group championships are being held at the Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre, Nottingham, on Sunday morning, and among the entrants are Tara Johnson (Newburn), 13-14 years, David Proud (Chester-le-Street) and Chris Philpott (Peterlee), 15-16 years, and Abbey Gunton (Newcastle), 17 years and over.

The times of Tara and Abbey, along with the fastest of the two boys, will be added together and they will count in the age group team competition. The men and women's 1500km championships will be swum in the afternoon when the twin counties only representative will be Denry Aal (Newcastle)