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New Zealand swimmers moved to fifth on the medal standings with two bronze medals on the third night of finals at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne tonight.

North Shore’s Cameron Gibson scored a bronze in the final of the 200m backstroke while the quartet of Lauren Boyle, Helen Norfolk, Alison Fitch and Melissa Ingram combined to earn bronze in the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay.

It was New Zealand’s first relay success for women since the bronze medal in the same event at the 1990 Games in Auckland.

New Zealand’s gold and two bronze medals lifted them to fifth behind Australia, England, Scotland and South Africa and ahead of Canada and Wales.

There were also some near misses with Hannah McLean finishing fourth in the 100m backstroke, Daniel Sharp fifth in the EAD 50m freestyle and Liz Coster.

Gibson set the tone with his bronze medal in the first race of the night, going through the 150m mark in fourth place before lifting with a strong final 50m in 30.28s to push his way to third in 2:00.72, just 2/10ths of a second outside Paul Kingsman’s 18-year-old New Zealand record.

``I had felt terrible over the last two days with a sinus infection but felt a little better. If the head and the heart are right to race well, that that was all that counted,’’ Gibson said. ``It’s been a really tough last 18 months but this is the reward for that hard work.’’

The second medal came at the end of the night when the women’s quartet blitzed their national record by three seconds to just hold on for third spot. Boyle had them in fourth place with a 2:00.49 lead-off swim, while Norfolk pushed them into the lead at the 300m mark before settling in third with a 2:00.56. Fitch, who bypassed the final of the 100m freestyle to concentrate on the relay, pushed them up to second place with a 2:00.35 while Ingram held off a fighting final 50m from Canada’s Brittany Reimer to take third place by just 4/00ths of a second.

``That was amazing. I know we made the right decision to drop out of the 100m freestyle. If I had swum it and we had got fourth in the relay it would have stuck with me,’’ Fitch said.

There was heartache for Coster who broke her own New Zealand record recording 1:00.34 in the semifinals of the 100m butterfly but missed out on a spot in the final by 1/10th of a second. Georgina Toomey was 13th fastest in 1:02.75.

Sharp had a strong performance to finish fifth in the 50m freestyle EADin a time corrected 25.81s.

Tomorrow’s fourth day of heats includes Glenn Snyders in the 50m breaststroke, Coster and McLean in the 50m backstroke, Corney Swanepoel, Moss Burmester and Andrew McMillan in the 100m butterfly, Annabelle Carey in the 100m breaststroke, Gibson and Scott Talbot Cameron in the 100m backstroke, Nichola Chellingworth, Fitch and Toomey in the 50m freestyle and Dean Kent in the 400m individual medley.