2023 BUCS LONG COURSE CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Friday, February 24th – Sunday, February 26th
- Ponds Forge International Swimming Center, Sheffield, England
- LCM (50m)
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The 2023 British Universities & Colleges (BUCS) Long Course Championships got underway from Ponds Forge with the men’s and women’s 1500m freestyle finals taking to the pool.
First, it was a Loughborough 1-2 punch for the women, as Fleur Lewis and Lucie Hanquet took their respective gold and silver to kick off the annual meet.
Lewis got to the wall in a time of 16:28.47 while teammate Hanquet was just over 2 seconds behind in 16:30.55. Bath’s Leah Crisp rounded out the top 3 with a mark of 16:34.64 this evening.
All 3 of these top finishers overtook their previous personal bests in this event.
Entering this meet, Lewis’ PB rested at the 16:43.21 notched in 2020. She now becomes Great Britain’s 11th-fastest performer ever in the event.
As for Hanquet, she already raced this 1500m free last month at the Luxembourg Euro Meet but her result tonight destroyed that previous PB of 16:43.52. Finally, for Crisp, the Bath swimmer’s 16:38.76 PB from 2019 also bit the dust with her bronze medal-earning result this evening.
On the men’s 1500m, on-fire Irishman Daniel Wiffen fully displayed his distance dominance. The 21-year-old fired off a solid swim of 15:02.92 to defeat the field by nearly 30 seconds.
Loughborough teammate Tobias Robinson was good enough for silver in 15:31.71 while Swansea’s Joseph Deighan rounded out the podium in 15:51.90 for bronze.
Wiffen’s performance here sits just outside the season-best 15:00.34 he produced at last month’s Euro Meet to be positioned as the 3rd fastest performer in the world this season.
As a refresher, Wiffen became Ireland’s first-ever European Record holder when he popped a SCM 800 free time of 7:25.96 last December.
Quite shockingly that is the fastest 1500 from a British woman in 6 years. Good to see some positive signs at last; We hadn’t had a woman under 16.35 since 2019 – Now we’ve had three in the past week. Baby steps, but a little bit of much needed progress for British distance swimming is good to see.