Jimboomba State School’s school pool may just be home to the next Michael Phelps in nine-year-old Ryan Sutcliffe.
The young swimmer broke five longstanding school records at the recent school swim carnival last month, including a record which stood unbeaten for 15 years.
The superfish who swims with Beaudesert swim club broke the nine years 25 metre records in freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly and also broke the 4x 25 metre individual medley record.
The individual medley record has stood since Beau Daffey set the mark in 2001, with Sutcliffe setting a new mark of one minute one minute 29.534 seconds, besting the previous record by almost eight seconds.
In the backstroke his time 18.56 seconds beat a 2006 record held by Jayden Nicoll of 21.81 seconds.
Sutcliffe also claimed Nicoll’s record in the butterfly with 16.31 seconds knocking down Nicoll’s 19.10 seconds.
In the 25 metre freestyle he set a time of 14.90 seconds to beat former record owner Zackeri Joyce’s 16.62 second record from 2011, before beating Joyce’s breaststroke record from 2012 of 23.49 seconds with a new mark of 20.34 seconds.
Sutcliffe said one of the best aspects of his record breaking swims was having Joyce in attendance at the carnival.
“I’m pretty happy, we had this kid called Zac and they watched me race and it was his records that I broke and every time that Mr Ball would announce that i broke the record when we came up for the trophies Mr ball said to Zac that he might need to get a box of tissues for him,” he said.
“My favourite stroke is butterfly, I started club when I was about five or six but I started learn to swim about one-year-old or something like that.”
Sutcliffe said during each swim he had no idea whether he broke any school records as his focus was just on swimming fast.
“They give you a little sheet and it tells you the time at the end and when you come over to the people that write down your times and points they usually write down if it is a record.”
Sutcliffe said he would love to one day swim on the world stage and was quietly confident his name will stay atop the record sheet for years to come.
“I think the records should stand for some time now, I hope so anyway,” he said.
Jimboomba State School’s sports coordinator Paul Ball was more than impressed with Sutcliffe’s efforts.
“He didn’t just break them he smashed them,” he said.