BOURNEMOUTH Collegiate School saved the best to last as they took on England’s finest school relay teams in the Olympic pool.

The Southbourne school reached four finals to lead the way for Dorset at the English Secondary Schools Team Championships at the London Aquatics Centre.

Their intermediate team of Ella Chown, Claudia Ashford, Kayla van der Merwe and Grace Poynter were also Dorset’s best placed team with fifth in their 4x50m medley relay (2:05.29) – the last girls’ final of the day.

Earlier the same quartet came sixth in the 4x50m freestyle in 1:54.62.

The podium places in these and most other events were dominated by the South West’s “big three” of Millfield, Plymouth College and Mount Kelly, all of whom have international swim scholarship schemes and 50m pools to train in.

Dorset was well represented in the senior girls’ medley with Parkstone Grammar and BCS both making the 10-team final and Sherborne Girls’ School missing out by 0.02sec as they came 11th.

The Parkstone team of Abbie Quarrie (backstroke), Jess Richens (breaststroke), Jazz McCrea (butterfly) and Leonie Wiehle (freestyle) improved their pre-meet ranking by 10 places to qualify eighth for the final, where they improved again to come sixth in 2:08.95.

They were also sixth in the freestyle in 1:53.96.

BCS’s Lottie James, Tamsin Edge, Honor Davies and Alesha Gibson were ninth in the medley (2:10.01) and 10th in the freestyle (1:56.55).

Sherborne were 17th in the senior freestyle.

Poole Grammar School were the best placed Dorset boys’ team with 14th in the junior freestyle relay.

Highcliffe were 18th in the junior medley and 27th in the freestyle while BCS came 20th in the senior boys’ freestyle.

• Dorset’s oldest men and youngest women led the scoring as the county came third in the South West round of the Swim England Inter-county Masters competition at Millfield.

The 65 and over men dropped only two points out of a possible 24 with wins from Nigel Foster in the 50m backstroke in 37.25 and Roger Guttridge in the breaststroke (44.51) and second places from Foster in the butterfly and 1968 Olympian Dave Hembrow in the freestyle.

The 18/o women also piled on the points with Fiona Hardie first in the 50m freestyle (27.28) and third in backstroke and the team’s youngest member Jess Richens, 18, second in the breaststroke and butterfly just 24 hours after the schools relays in London.

Dorset’s fourth win came from the women’s 100yrs freestyle team of Richens, Hardie, Jo White and Kelly Steenkamp.

The results will be merged with those from other regions to produce a national result.

Other individual second places: 65/o Linda Ashmore 50m free; 55/o Helen Dickins 50m fly; 45/o Andy Small 50m back, Cate Read 50m free; 35/o Karen Yendole 50m breast; 25/o Paul Corbin 50m fly; 18/o Luke Roxburgh 50m breast.

Result: 1 Devon 355, 2 Gloucestershire 289, 3 Dorset 246, 4 Wiltshire 188, 5 Cornwall 174, 6 Somerset 147.