Britain rounded off their two-week tour of the Far East with a further six medals, including two gold, on the final night of action at the Japan Open in Tokyo.
Off the back of a punishing camp in Thailand, Britain’s athletes showed their resilience against rested opposition to amass a haul of 19 medals across the three-day event at the Tatsumi International pool.
James Guy (National Centre Bath) took his third medal of the Open with gold in the Men’s 100m Butterfly with a new personal best time of 51.50.
“That is a great time,” said Guy. “It's a new personal best for me and is a bit of a surprise considering the workloads I'm currently under and off the back of a tough camp in Thailand.”
“It's looking good for the summer. There's more hard work to come but when I'm rested and tapered it will put me in a good place by the time Budapest comes around.”
Ben Proud (Plymouth Leander) took his second gold of the championships when he won the Men’s 50m Freestyle in a close run final.
“I'm really happy with that performance,” said Proud. “It was great to race against such fast guys, it pushed me on to the wall.
“It's been a great competition for me against a very talented field. To come out on top in such heavy training shows I'm going in the right direction.”
Alys Thomas (City of Swansea Aquatics) took a hard-fought silver in the Women’s 100m Butterfly and Molly Renshaw (National Centre Loughborough) looked strong to take silver at the wall in the Women’s 200m Breaststroke.
Hannah Miley (University of Aberdeen) won her second medal of the meet when she took silver in the Women’s 200 Individual Medley while in the Women’s 50m Backstroke Georgia Davies (Loughborough University) also claimed silver.
Commenting on the competition and preceding preparation camp, British Swimming Head Coach Bill Furniss said: “This tour has ticked all of the boxes. It’s what we wanted to do - to travel east in year one of an Olympic cycle leading into Tokyo.
“We had a tough camp in Thailand and then came into a really difficult competition, stacked with a great depth of Japanese talent. We knew we would have to swim the event in a compromised state, off the back of some very hard work, but we were very close to a 100% strike rate of our swimmers moving it on from heats to finals and I’m delighted by this.
“I’m pleased with how the team has coped with the travel and it’s back to the UK now for a few days’ recovery before phase two begins, the hard work continues and we head to the Seven Hills meet in Rome next month.”