Ben Proud insists there is still room for improvement despite lowering his own British 50m freestyle record en route to the title at the 2017 British Swimming Championships in Sheffield.
The Rio 2016 Olympian touched the wall in 21.32 to not only successfully retain his British title for a third year running but also dip under the qualification for this summer’s World Championships in Budapest.
There were also wins for Holly Hibbott, Max Litchfield, Georgia Davies and Hannah Miley.
“It feels great to have lowered that record,” Proud said after finished first ahead of fellow Plymouth Leander swimmer Thomas Fannon and Edinburgh’s Jack Thorpe.
“You never know what time you are going to swim in a 50m race so when I touched my hand on the wall and saw 21.32 I thought ‘oh that’s quite good.’
“It’s impressive for this time in the season. I’m still looking to move that on as well. To be honest I’m not happy with how I swam it and I think I could have gone faster but it is what it is."
“Fast times at this time of the year don’t really mean that much so all I have to do is keep working hard and by Budapest if I can move that time on that would be great.”
Litchfield secured his second gold medal of the Championships after coming from behind in the final of 200m individual medley.
Double Olympic silver medallist Duncan Scott had taken the race out hard but Litchfield stay in contention and stormed through in the final 50m to post a new personal best time of 1:58.10, which is also a contention time for the World Championships.
“I’ve raced well towards the back-end of last year and this week so I’m excited,” he said. “Coming here was all about trying to qualify for Budapest and now the focus is to get back into hard training and I’m massively looking forward to it.”
Davies powered through to seal the gold medal in the 50m backstroke after being pushed all the way by Kathleen Dawson while Hibbott saw an excellent final of the 400m freestyle to take her first senior British title.
And Olympic finalist Miley rounded off the night by taking gold in the 200m individual medley after earlier racing the 400m freestyle in the evening.
Aberdeen Performance’s Miley touched just ahead of National Centre Loughborough’s Abbie Wood and Molly Renshaw.
Olympic silver medallist Siobhan-Marie O’Connor was disqualified for a false start having previously won the race.
Sportsbeat 2017