CHESTER couple Tom and Brenda Walker have returned from the World Masters Swimming Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, loaded down with medals.

They brought home two golds and a silver each, with Tom also picking up a bronze.

Tom’s achievements are particularly remarkable as he has only just recovered from a serious injury. During last winter, he slipped on a patch of ice and shattered his fourth thoracic vertebrae in his back.

As for Brenda, she was delighted to join her husband in becoming a world champion.

She said: “I was not expecting anything, as I’m in the third year of a 70-74 age category.”

She had to withstand torrential rain in the outdoor pool to register her first gold.

Despite the rain, and “swimming blind”, she caught sight of the lane rope, and powered home to victory in the 200m backstroke, not even knowing she had won after reaching the finish line first.

She then added gold in the 50m and silver in the 100m backstroke, before finishing sixth in the 200m freestyle, and had two fourth-place finishes in the relays.

Her husband’s golds came in the 100m and 200m breaststroke. Tom also took silver in the 50m event and bronze in the 200m backstroke, before claiming fifth place in the 200m medley.

The Handbridge-based pair are no strangers to the big stage, as Tom first took part in a masters event in 1981. After watching him compete, Brenda joined in the next year.

Back in 2000, at the World Championships in New Zealand, he won gold in the 50, 100 and 200m breast-stroke events, breaking world records in two of them.

This year’s medal haul was Brenda’s best at a World Championships.

Brenda said it was “inspiring” to listen to some of the other competitors’ stories.

“Hearing what people have had to get through just to be here just shows what the human spirit can do, and what it can overcome when it wants to,” she said.

The duo will warm-up for the English Championships in Sheffield by competing at meets in Halton and Bangor, but the real headliner will be next year’s European Championships in Yalta, Ukraine.

“The aim is to get slower,” Tom said of Masters swimming. “But not as fast as other people get slower!”