New Zealand swimmers sealed an outstanding week with a gold medal in the last session of finals in the pool at the Junior Pan Pacific championships in Guam last night (NZT).
The teenage quartet of Gareth Kean, Starn Simpson, Daniel Bell and Cameron Burrows upset favourites Australia and
the United States to win the men's 400m medley relay.
Earlier, West Auckland's Bell, 18, earned a bronze in the final of the 50m freestyle.
This added to his two gold medals in the 100m backstroke and 100m butterfly and bronze in the 100m freestyle.
The championships end tomorrow with Rotorua's Kane Radford contesting the 10km open water swim.
New Zealand has won six medals at the championships with four to Bell and another gold to Wellington's Kean.
They qualified for another four A finals last night with Whangaparaoa's Mitchell Donaldson fifth in the 200m individual medley in a time of two minutes 4.59 seconds, nearly 5sec off the 16 years national age group record.
Christchurch's Amaka Gessler was eighth in the final of the 50m freestyle in 26.81sec, while North Shore's Chloe Francis was eighth in the final of the 200m breaststroke in 2min 37.22sec.
Taranaki's Dylan Dunlop-Barrett and Dunedin's Shane Patience were seventh and eighth respectively in the men's 800m freestyle.
Bell clocked 23.00sec to finish third in the 50m freestyle, 1/10th of a second from the winner, Kento Ito, of Japan, with Australian Tommaso D'Orsogna second in 22.96sec.
Bell's time swiped more than half a second off the 18 years New Zealand age group record.
The pool competition concluded with a magnificent effort from men's medley relay team in a battle with swimming superpowers Australia and the US.
Kean gave them the early advantage in the backstroke and they remained ahead of the US after the breaststroke from Simpson.
Bell produced an outstanding butterfly leg of 51.66sec before Burrows held off a charge from D'Orsogna, who overtook the Americans and came within 6/100ths of a second of grabbing victory.
New Zealand's winning time of 3min 42.07sec established a new meet record.
Both the New Zealand men and the women finished fifth overall on the points table behind Australia, the US, Japan and Canada.
- NZPA
