Mark Szaranek has just left Auchmuty High School to embark on a gap year that will be very different from most.
There will be no jolly jaunt travelling the world, instead it will be all about hard work and commitment if he is to fulfil his dream of competing for Scotland at next year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Competing in the Games' Pool, the 17-year-old showed some fine form yesterday in winning the 200 metre individual medley at the Scottish Gas National Open Championships at the Tollcross International Centre.
Typically critical of his performances, Szaranek was not too impressed with his time of 2:06.82 but it was still good enough to fend off second-place Fabian Whitbread (Warrender). "I was hoping to go a wee bit quicker but it is always good to win," said Szaranek, who is coached by his father, John, at the Carnegie Club in Dunfermline.
The teenager will compete at the world championship trials in Sheffield in two weeks' time, before making his first British team appearance, at the European Junior Championships in Poland. "After that, it will be time to knuckle down and concentrate on swimming full-time. I'm going to take a gap year to try and make the Games' team," he said.
"I want to study chemical engineering [at university] but I won't be going anywhere until after Glasgow 2014.
"The next year will be dedicated to swimming. Now that I have left school I'll be able to focus so much more and get the proper rest between sessions."
One Scot who knows all about preparing for major championships is Hannah Miley, who has competed in two Olympics and will attend a third Commonwealths in Glasgow. The world champion-ships in Barcelona next month represents her more immediate concern, though – she won a silver medal in the 400m individual medley in Shanghai two years ago – and her preparation for the trials continued with another two gold medals at Tollcross.
She won the 400m freestyle (4:14.04) and 200m butterfly (2:13.19), her fifth and sixth wins of the Championships, with more success expected today. However, the proximity of the world trials resulted in a few absentees. Craig McNally swam the heats of the 200m backstroke, but withdrew from the final and his Warrender clubmate and Olympian, Craig Benson, pulled out from the 100m breaststroke.
That left Jamie Graham (City of Glasgow) to win the breaststroke in 1:02.31, while Stirling's Ryan Bennett won the backstroke in 2:00.80. Borderer Lucy Hope, who will also compete in Poland, took silver in the 100m backstroke.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article