DEBEN Swimming Club's Harry Fulcher has extra reason to celebrate his 11th birthday this week after beating his mum's 50m Butterfly time.Harry's mother Sam, 41, is a masters swimmer and instructor at the club and holds a time of 39.

DEBEN Swimming Club's Harry Fulcher has extra reason to celebrate his 11th birthday this week after beating his mum's 50m Butterfly time.

Harry's mother Sam, 41, is a masters swimmer and instructor at the club and holds a time of 39.68s in the 50m fly. Harry, who has only been swimming for two years, managed to top his mum's personal best in what is fast becoming his strongest stroke, knocking an incredible three seconds off his PB for a time of 39s dead.

The swim that has brought Harry the bragging rights in the Fulcher household came at Deben Swimming Club's recent time trial event.

Mother Sam said: “His big thing for quite a while was when he was going to beat me. I said to him it would happen soon but even I didn't think it would happen this quick.

“The first thing he asked when he had finished the swim was what my 50m fly time was and when I told him he just shouted 'I did it!', he was absolutely thrilled.

“Harry is very competitive and he would love to think he is going to the Olympics! He's chugging along quite nicely now though so we will just have to wait and see how he progresses.”

Harry, who goes to Nacton Village school, has just been moved up into Deben's development squad through which he trains four hours a week. As well as his 50m fly time, Harry had a second county qualifying time in the 200m freestyle but, due to his birthday week, will now have to qualify against times set by other eleven year olds.

Sam Fulcher, who has also dabbled in triathlon, has now set herself the target of shaving some time off her personal best as she continues to train four hours a week with the 21st century group.

Deben Swimming Club held a time trial event on the first weekend in February to give some of their youngsters a taste of competition swimming for the first time.

Many of the swimmers taking part were from the teaching and disabled sections of the club and were competing in their first ever gala.

It was a great opportunity for swimmers of all abilities to get some times and for others to improve on their personal bests.

There were a number of impressive individual swims, the novice swimmers racing over 25 metres and some of the more experienced swimmers competing over a distance of 50 metres.

Deben swimmers are now looking forward to a winter league fixture at the end of this month, followed by the county championships in Ipswich over the first three weekends in March.

Deben spokesperson Sally Fulcher said: “We have got a lot of older swimmers who should do very well, a lot of them will be looking for regional times while a few should do quite well in the individual placings.”