Five swimmers dipped under the Tokyo 2020 consideration standard, while pre-selected duo Duncan Scott and James Wilby also impressed on day three of the British Swimming Selection Trials.
With athletes needing to finish in the top two in their event and clock a pre-designated time to put themselves in the frame for Olympic selection when the swimming contingent is announced later this month, Max Litchfield, Brodie Williams, Alys Thomas, Matthew Richards and Ross Murdoch did exactly that.
Litchfield and Williams kicked off the night by finishing one-two in the 400m individual medley and strong freestyle legs enabled them to dip inside the 4:13.47 consideration time.
Twenty-two-year-old Williams would be making his Olympic debut in Tokyo, while Litchfield – whose brother Joe has also recorded a consideration time this week – will be hoping to improve on a fourth-place finish in the 400m IM at Rio 2016.
“I’m really, really happy with that. I’d have liked it to be a little bit quicker, but it’s under the consideration time,” said Litchfield.
“In Rio, I was over the moon with fourth, but this time I want to go at least one better and get into the medals. I’ll need to be a little bit quicker than that, but it’s only April, so we’ve still got time.”
Alys Thomas’s story is one of perseverance as she only competed at her first World Championship as a 27-year-old in 2017 but is now in line for a remarkable Olympic debut aged 30 after winning the 200m butterfly in a time of 2:08.09.
“It took a while to look at the board and realise it was me in that lane and it was me that had done it!” said Thomas.
“The last couple of years have just been so up and down and overwhelming at some points, I’m so glad I did it, I believed in myself today and I got the time I wanted.”
The men’s 100m freestyle – always one of the blue riband swimming events at a Games – provided a scorching spectacle as reigning world champion Duncan Scott, already pre-selected for Tokyo before this week, equalled his British record with a time of 47.87s.
Yet 18-year-old Matthew Richards also impressed with a huge PB to touch in 48.23s – 0.12 seconds inside the consideration time – and prove immediate vindication for his decision to move from Royal Wolverhampton to train at the Bath National Centre last summer.
“I was trying to keep up with this guy here (Scott)!” said Richards. “I can’t thank the team I’ve got around me enough, everyone at Bath, everyone at Royal Wolverhampton, my mum my dad, my grandparents, my whole family.”
The men’s 200m breaststroke saw another of Team GB’s four pre-selected swimmers, James Wilby, claim success in a time of 2:08.06 but Ross Murdoch was only 0.92s slower and managed to dive inside the consideration standard.
He now looks set for a second Olympic Games after a gutsy display following a pretty quick time in the morning heats before the evening’s final.
“I’m absolutely delighted with that,” admitted Murdoch. “It was quite hard this morning, I was almost all in this morning, but that’s one of the plans we had coming into this to try to push the heats and have a good adaptation to the evening, a bit of learning and that’s what we got.
“It was good consolidation this evening, about a second faster and I’m absolutely delighted.”
And in the women’s 400m freestyle Holly Hibbott came agonisingly close to making it a clean sweep of consideration times on day three but her clocking of 4:07.03 as she cruised to victory was just over a second outside what she needed.