More records broken

Neptunes swimmers continued where they left off on Saturday when yesterday morning they broke two more national records in the men's and women's 4x50 freestyle relays, as the 2009 National Championships continued at Tal-Qroqq.

Talisa Pace, Nikki Muscat, Maxine Scerri and Melinda Sue Micallef bettered the previous record of 1:56.14, set three years ago, when they clocked 1:51.41, while the boys' team, made up of David Zammit, Beppe Grech, Edward Caruana Dingli and Mark Sammut, clipped 4.22 seconds off the previous 2008 limit.

In individual events, Andrea Agius swam the 50m breaststroke in 30.99, shaving 0.01 of a second off his previous national mark.

During the same race, Daniel Galea (Group D) registered 32.11 seconds to improve his own old limit by 0.45 seconds.

The other record in the morning session, also in Group D, came from Pace with a time of 27.57, 0.47 seconds inside her 50m freestyle mark set in February this year.

Four more records were set up in the afternoon.

Neil Agius beat the 200m freestyle national mark when recording 2:00.22, a time which bettered his own old limit by 0.38 seconds.

Pace clocked 2:11.70 in the 200 free to improve her old Group D record by 0.55 seconds and then went on to clock 1:00.63 in the 100 free to better the category record by 0.1 of a second.

The eight-year-old 200m breastroke record of Mark Buttigieg, in age group D, was also removed courtesy of Galea. The Sliema swimmer bettered that time by 0.10 of a second when clocking 2:37.56.

On Saturday, the Neptunes medley relay girls started the record streak when clocking 4:35.11.