The performance of the opening day of the 11th Easter International Swimming meeting at the Tal-Qroqq Pool, was provided by Neil Agius.

The Neptunes swimmer set a new national mark of 4:21.24 in the 400m freestyle to reduce J.J. Tabone's time, set in 1998, by 0.88 seconds.

Agius, who also holds the 1,500m record, is just back from a two-week training spell in Wales under David Haller, City of Cardiff team coach who also guides Britain's 1,500m prodigy David Davies.

Budding Sliema ASC swimmer Daniel Galea also earned the plaudits yesterday. The 10-year-old posted a 42.69 to clip 0.30 of a second of the age-group (A) 50 metres breaststroke record set by Mark Buttigieg in October 1996.

In the afternoon session, Galea and Gabriel Pace of Neptunes, spurred each other towards new PBs, the former clocking 40.11s in the 50 back and 1:15.85 in the 100 free. Pace recorded 41.24 in the backstroke and 1:15.69 (PB) in the free event.

Other highlights of the meeting were Kyle Scerri's (Neptunes) two PBs, 1:03.27 and 2:09.09, in the 100m butterfly and 200m free respectively. He also attained a creditable 58.92 in the 100 free. Also conspicuous were the time of 2:27.55 obtained by Kim Attard (Neptunes) in the 200 free (B) category and Fran-cesca Paolella's (Sliema) 1:14.99 in the 100m fly.

The meeting, with a total of 303 swimmers from 14 clubs representing six countries, comes to an end today with morning and afternoon sessions at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.