Matthew Glassford (Neptune) smashed his best time when he won the feature men's 1500m freestyle title at the Otago championships at Moana Pool last night.
Glassford (19) lowered his time by 19 seconds when he beat open water swimmer Bryn Murphy (Waves) and won in 16min 11.5sec.
Murphy (23) was 11 seconds back with 16min 22.15sec.
Glassford applied pressure from the start, but the experienced Murphy closed the gap when he developed his rhythm.
They were together with 11 laps left when Glassford put in a burner.
He had a body length lead after two more laps and with seven laps to go, he led by two lengths and increased it to four lengths after two more laps.
Glassford also won the 800m title in 8min 33.62sec when he narrowly beat Murphy who was timed at 8min 33.90sec.
It was swum as one race with the leader at 800m taking that title.
It was an personal-best time by 11 seconds for Glassford.
International Phoebe Williams (Waves) was a comfortable winner of the women's 800m (9min 3.14sec) and 1500m (17min 3.67sec) titles.
Katie Kenneally (Neptune) was second in the 800m in a personal-best 9min 20.31sec.
Jeremy Tasker (Oamaru) lowered his 1500m freestyle time by 39 seconds when he won the boys aged 14 and 15 title in 17min 41.56sec.
Kieran Oswald (Waves) lowered his time by a massive 1min 54sec when he finished fifth in the same race and qualified for the national age-group championships for the first time.
