An all-round team effort saw the Swim Team to a fine 4th place in the Grand Final of the BUSA swimming league at Nottingham University on Saturday (Dan Mikulskis writes).

Having cruised into the final from the qualifying round last november the blues had every reason to be positive despite a lack of sharpness due to a reduced training schedule after the Varsity Match.

Defending champions Bath, favourites Loughborough and newcomers Northumbria were all fielding many swimmers that had featured prominently at the English Commonwealth Games Trials just a week before, and it was obvious from the opening event (medley relay) that this was going to be a quality meet -Bath and Loughborough recording blisteringly fast times. Undaunted and certainly not outclassed, the blues" traditional strength in these events saw the ladies team secure 3rd place and the men 4th.

The quality of the opposition in the individual events meant that high placings were very hard to come by, a consistent stream of 3rd and 4th positions maintained the blues in a useful position in the middle of the field. Leading performers were, unsurprisingly, Gemma Hindson (100fly, 200 free) for the ladies and Viktor Stein( 100 back, 50 fly) for the men, both some way off their mercurial best but still good enough to take it to the top three teams, who at times threatened to turn the meet into a two-tier affair.

The freestyle relays concluded the meet and Cambridge again demonstrated what a team performance this had been by recording 3rd place in both the mens" and ladies events which saw them home in 4th place overall, re-enforcing their positions as "the best of the rest" after the big three of Loughborough, Bath and Northumbria.