THE Dublin pool was tiled with gold for Bournemouth Collegiate School’s world and Commonwealth champion and world record holder Alice Tai.

The 19-year-old from New Milton powered to four golds at the European Para-Swimming Championships to help Britain to third place in the medal table behind Ukraine and Italy.

With Paralympic champion Mikey Jones also claiming his first European title, it meant New Milton swimmers contributed 25 per cent of Britain’s tally of 20 gold medals.

Tai, who has twice been reclassified since winning S10 backstroke bronze and relay gold at Rio 2016, now swims in the S8 category and began as she meant to continue.

She dominated the S8 100m backstroke, heading a British one-two with a nine-second victory margin over silver medallist Megan Richter.

Tai’s winning time of 1:08.96 was 0.6sec outside the world record she set at Sheffield earlier this year.

“I’m really happy about the medal but I went out too fast,” she said.

“I’m going to have to work on that. If I want to get close to my PB, I need to improve my pacing.

“I love racing so to not have anyone next to me on the final 50m was a bit odd.

“I just need to get in the right headspace to be able to race myself.”

A day later, Tai stormed to victory in the 100m freestyle in 1:05.53, almost two seconds outside her world record but 1.55 ahead of Italian runner-up Xania Palazzo.

She completed her hat-trick of individual golds in the 100m butterfly, beating Ukrainian runner-up Kateryna Denysenko by more than three seconds in 1:10.51.

“It’s great to have three finals in three days and come away with three golds,” said Tai, who trains at the British Para-swimming National Performance Centre in Manchester but still represents BCS.

“I was focusing on my recovery strategy after the heats and changing a few things. That was a bit of a hurdle for me here.”

Gold number four came in the 34-point 4x100m medley relay where Tai gave the British quartet a flying start with a 2.4sec lead on the backstroke leg.

Mikey Jones, 24, who is also based at the Manchester performance centre, claimed his gold in the S7 400m freestyle – the event that won him Paralympic gold in Rio.

But he had to work for it, beating Mark Malyar of Israel to the touch by just 0.15sec in 4:48.54.

Jones, who was also sixth in the 50m and 100m freestyle, said: “It was an immensely tough race for me after a season disrupted by injury and shoulder surgery in November

“I was the fastest on paper but I knew others would improve.

“Mark Malyar and I were stroke for stroke going into the final 50 and I was determined not to be beaten.”

He added: “To make finals in all my races was far beyond my expectations.”