A small squad of Mid Beds swimmers raced at Sheffield over the weekend and came close to achieving their national qualifying times. Doug Kerr swam the 100m backstroke race of his life to qualify for the open final against some of the best swimmers in the

A small squad of Mid Beds swimmers raced at Sheffield over the weekend and came close to achieving their national qualifying times.

Doug Kerr swam the 100m backstroke race of his life to qualify for the open final against some of the best swimmers in the country.

Having already set a personal best in the heat, he went on to shave nearly a second off his time to take the gold and leave him just 0.34 seconds outside his national time.

Nick Metcalf, Carmen Mallet and Adam Ingledew also made finals in the 50m freestyle, 200m breaststroke and 100m freestyle respectively.

Ingledew was the only 13-year-old in the 14 and under final and finished a respectable fifth inside his national qualifying time for a 50m pool. He also achieved his time in the 200m freestyle earlier that day.

Harriet Brettle just missed her 800m freestyle national time long course finishing in 9:41.70.

Abbie Lavallin swam five seconds inside her best in the 200m individual medley.

Louise King narrowly missed the open final for the 100m butterfly finishing in 1:10.10 as did Hannah Raine in the same event.

The boys also swam well with Alex Raine, Christian Stokes and Tom Kelly all setting massive long course personal bests in their freestyle events as did Alasdair Kerr in the 200m breaststroke.