Final day ends in a flourish

The final day of the 16th Vileda International Swimming Meet at Tal-Qroqq ended on a flourishing note yesterday as the boys' 4 x 200 metres relay team smashed the national record set in 2007 by a massive 10.23 seconds when clocking 8:22.23 seconds in the last race of a rather chilly but very productive day.

The quartet was made up of Mark Sammut, Neil Agius, Edward Caruana Dingli and Andrea Agius.

It was the fifth record of the day, making it an impressive total of nine national and seven age-group records over the three day meeting, the best ever in this traditional event.

In the morning Malta's top freestyle swimmer, Neil Agius, and Talisa Pace stole the limelight, with the afternoon gloss being provided by Andrea Agius and the boys' relay team.

Neil Agius shaved 0.32 seconds off his own 400 metres freestyle best when clocking a time of 4:15.32 seconds, while Pace added two more age-group records to her long list of new limits over the one and two-lap races. She first swam the 100 metres freestyle in 1:00.73 to better her own group D mark set last November and then clocked 30.40 seconds in the 50 metres 'Fly, 0.24 seconds inside Davina Mangion's previous category best in 2003.

The last individual record was that of Andrea Agius who broke his own previous 100 metres breaststroke national best set some months ago by one-hundredth of a second when registering 1:09.22.