BSC Day 4 finals: 5 titles for Parry as championships close

The 2002 British Short Course Championships closed with a bang tonight in Cambridge as the last 11 titles were decided. This championship has been varied in its success in terms of swimming performances, but has never been anything other than entertaining. The final session more than lived up to that premise.

The 400IM saw most attention focused on the two young ladies in 3 and 4. The fastest qualifier was Becky Cooke, but 16-year-old Julia Preston had the faster lifetime best and her eyes on the junior qualification time. Cooke took it out hard on the fly, clearly aiming to blunt the advantage that the other girls would seek to gain on the breastroke led, her weakest section of the event. This worked to some extent as Preston faded, but swimming from lane 2 Loughborough’s Thea Evanson took her chance, surging through on the third 100. She was unable to get far enough clear though and Cooke