PPMG22 – That’s a Wrap!
What a huge event! The Pan Pacific Masters Games (PPMG) is the world’s biggest and best biennial masters’ games held on the Gold Coast. After two pandemic cancellations in 2020 and 2021, this year over 13,500 participants came from every corner of Australia and around the world. Entrants arrived from 25 countries including teams from the UK, Canada, Sri Lanka and Guam to compete in 42 sports.
481 swimmers from 87 clubs entered the four days of swimming hosted by Masters Swimming Queensland. MSQ President Susanne Milenkevich, and MSQ Business Manager Christina Scolaro shared the Sport Convenor role and worked closely with a fabulous team to ensure the success of these Games. Our thanks to the rest of the PPMG22 Organising Committee:
- Elaine Sng
- Emma Maxwell
- John Barrett
- John Munro
- Martin Banks
- Nic Carmichael
- Rose Milnes
An event of this size would not be possible without an army of volunteers and helpers. Thank you to our dedicated team of officials for your long hours on pool deck:
- Brian Brodribb
- Bruce Allender
- Cheryl Brodribb
- Colin Carter
- David Butler
- Heather Butler
- John Barrett
- Lori Chaplin
- Michele Burley-Jones
- Shannon Saladas
- Terry Major
We hope you enjoyed your time at the impressive Gold Coast Aquatic Centre. This is always an excellent venue for PPMG Swimming, and we thank the fabulous staff and Lifeguards for keeping us safe and assisting us in every way.
Thank you to Karen and Jane, our wonderful timing operators, for your helpfulness and professionalism, and thanks to David Findlay for managing results posting and relay entries, with assistance from Elaine Sng, Wendy Kingma, Liala Davighi and Vanessa Teece.
Thank you to Rose Milnes for again being our amazing Volunteer Coordinator. Rose worked closely with Linda Mansfield and Trish Robinson to ensure our team of volunteers were well looked after with uniforms, refreshments and breaks throughout the four days. Huge thanks also to Ros Davighi and Julie Bott for their work on the medal table presenting medals to our first, second and third placegetters. Thanks also to the fabulous John Harland, for his work managing the warmup pool throughout the event.
Events Management Queensland and Miami Masters Swimming Club supplied many volunteer timekeepers each day. Thank you all for your dedication, generosity, and support of our event! Thank you also to Lindy Daffy, Elaine Sng, Trish Robinson, Susanne Milenkevich and Dan Stampa for assisting with check starting. Many thanks to our fabulous team of announcers – John Munro, Greg Flanders and Toni Cameron. All our volunteers worked tirelessly, were integral in the success of PPMG22, and were very much appreciated. Thank you all.
This was the first PPMG Swimming sponsored by Funky Trunks and Funkita. It was wonderful to have added support for this event, with exclusive discounts for competitors, merchandise available at the event, and fabulous raffle prizes on offer. Raffle tickets were extremely popular, and there was plenty of interest when drawing the lucky tickets, and some incredibly happy winners! Swimmers also loved the commemorative PPMG caps and were proudly wearing them at the event. The backstroke flags looked fantastic, as did the banners at the podium. Thank you for your wonderful support, and we look forward to future MSQ-Funky collaborations.
Thank you to Teena and team from the Mermaid Trophy Centre for the beautiful medal engraving provided at the venue. Thanks to Active Body Therapies for providing immensely popular sports massages throughout the meet, and our thanks to Gary Brinkman for his professional photography at the event.
The four days of racing included all events from 50m to 800m in all strokes offering swimmers a wide range to choose from for their individual programs. Swimmers competed in a maximum of 10 individual events, with an average of five events per swimmer.
There was some tough competition, with an impressive number of records broken throughout the meet:
- 30 Australian National records
- 217 PPMG Games records
- 118 Branch records, including:
- 63 Queensland records
- 34 Victorian records
- 15 New South Wales records
- 3 Northern Territory records
Pan Pacific Masters Games Swimming is renowned as a fun meet to attend. When asked what swimmers love about this meet, responses included:
- Beautiful venue and relaxed atmosphere
- Relaxed and friendly vibe
- Getting to race distances we don’t normally get to do
- Friendliness of competitors volunteers and officials
- Seeing friends from all over Australia
- Swimming at the outdoor pool, the amazing weather and meeting the Australian Dolphins
- Chatting to new and old friends
- Camaraderie with other competitors
- Proper timing with touchpads, enabled to show reaction times and splits
- The venue, the amazing organisation, and the inclusivity
- Beautiful facility to race in, plenty of warm-up & swim down lanes
- Program published with estimated heat start times which is very helpful in planning days
- Venue & location, facilities were great with plenty of changerooms
- Lots of space to sit without being crammed in, plenty of parking available
As part of the survey we provided, swimmers also told us the following in consideration of future PPMG events:
54% of swimmers were first time competitors at PPMG22.
68% of respondents prefer PPMG Swimming to be held biennially.
56% of respondents indicate they would attend if PPMG Swimming held in 2023.
Thank you to all for making this year’s event so special, and we look forward to seeing you on the Gold Coast again soon!
All results and statistics can be found on the PPMG22 page on MSQ website.
Results are also listed on the MSA Portal.
Photos are available on the Pan Pacific Masters Swimming Facebook Page.
PPMG22 Fina Ranking (sum of top 5 Fina events)
PPMG22 Branch & National Record Breakers
