Edinburgh's swimmers took to the pool again last weekend in the latest round of BUCS competition, this particular event being the Long Course (50m) Championships, held at Ponds Forge complex in Sheffield. Despite having a smaller team than the one which came in 5^th place at the Short Course Championships, the eight swimmers involved all contributed to Edinburgh’s overall 7^th place finish.

This was the first major University meet to be held since the new FINA rules banning hi-tech swimsuits were brought into force in January. This, coupled with the competition being during hard training for many of the swimmers, made for an interesting and at times tough meet as the competitors adapted to the latest rule change. A number of Edinburgh’s swimmers had also just returned from a successful month long Commonwealth training camp in Australia, and so were ready to race and see where their times stood amongst the University elite.

The undoubted standout of the team was 4th year student Louise Pate, who recently shared the award for Edinburgh University’s female athlete of the year. Pate, a defending BUCS champion, once again showed her class by coolly taking gold in both the 50 and 100m butterfly in a time of 27.99 and 1:01.31 respectively. The meet will undoubtedly have been good preparation for Louise as she joins the British team and rubs shoulders with the likes of Rebecca Adlington and Liam Tancock, as they take on their Duel in the Pool against Germany later this month.

Edinburgh backcrawl specialist Darren Ward was also a regular feature in the finals, albeit just missing out on bronze in both the 50 and 100m backcrawl. In an exciting and very close 50m race, Ward was pipped into 4^th place by Herriot-Watt and fellow Edinburgh Uni performance swimming team mate Billy Purnell, by a tiny margin of 0.02 seconds.

The team freshers, Eleanor Brooke and Jennifer Davis, continued to impress in their first year of university competition as they qualified for a handful of finals between them. Brooke made a clean sweep of final qualifications, as she repeated her excellent performance at BUCS Short Course by appearing in all three finals of the individual breaststroke events. Eleanor’s highest finish was 6^th in the 100m – this along with her 7^th in the 200m and 10^th in the 50m made a considerable contribution to Edinburgh’s overall points total. Davis once again took on the notoriously tough 200m butterfly, finishing a respectable 9^th in the final to put more points on the board.

Another Edinburgh swimmer fresh from down under, James Thomson, took 5^th in the 400m individual medley and 7^th in the 200m. Freestyle sprinter Craig Meek, after swimming an off-par 50m freestyle, comfortably booked a place in the 100m freestyle final but couldn’t quite repeat his medal triumph at BUCS Short Course, instead this time finishing in a still respectable 7^th place.

With there being no Edinburgh women’s relay team in action this weekend, it was up to the men’s team to bump themselves up the overall rankings by finishing in strong positions in the relays, in which double points were awarded. The team of Darren Ward, James Thomson, Stuart Conley and Craig Meek finished 5^th in both the 4x100m medley and 4x100m freestyle relays – an excellent result when taking into account that both Ward and Thomson were in action in their individual finals just prior to the relay finals. The medley relay, the last event of the competition, was an especially tight race as despite some super tight takeovers, Edinburgh was just beaten into 5^th by 0.37 seconds.

Regardless, the 7^th place attained by Edinburgh has firmly put them on the map for BUCS Long Course - in only the second season a team has competed there. This finishing position looks set to only rise as the team becomes more established at this competition. Next up for the swimmers is the Team Championships in March, where they will be hungry to consolidate, or perhaps even improve on, the overall second place obtained there in the 2008/2009 season. Will they be able to mount a considerable challenge on holders Loughborough? Time will tell!