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Brilliant Auckland swimmer Orinoco Faaumasili-Banse set the seal on a record setting final night of the New Zealand age group championships in Christchurch tonight.

The 17 year old broke the national age group mark for the 50m freestyle, coming within 3/100ths of the open record in a superb performance at the QE2 Leisure Centre.

Banse was one of four national age group records to fall, bringing the total to 10 over the five-day meet.

The others went to Dunedin’s Shane Patience in the 1500m freestyle and Auckland’s Shaquille Vaotu’ua and Masterton’s Neil van Wijt, both in the 100m breaststroke.

Banse, who broke the 100m freestyle record earlier in the meet, clocked a superb 22.85s to break the age group mark previously held by Auckland’s Brad Herring.

It was just 3/100ths of a second outside the new national open record set by Brad’s brother Mark Herring at the Auckland championships two weeks ago of 22.82.

It sets up a mouth-watering prospect at this month’s Olympic Trials Herring, Cameron Gibson and Banse separated by just 3/100ths of a second in their best times.

The performance earned Banse the Hansell’s Trophy for the swimmer to break a national record by the biggest margin.

Patience (Waves) lived up to his name in the 1500m final for 17-18 years. Open water star Kane Radford (Aqatox Rotorua) pushed to a significant early advantage before Patience reeled him on, going on to win in 15:45.35s.

This broke the old mark of the two-time Olympic gold medallist Danyon Loader by more than seven seconds.

Van Wijt completed a superb meet with his third national age group record, clocking 1:07.91 to take 4/10ths off the old mark in the 14 years 100m breaststroke.

Vaotu’ua broke his second record of the championships clocking 1:10.54 for 13 years in the same event.

For full results see www.swimmingnz.org.nz