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Liz Coster upset her more illustrious clubmate Hannah McLean to win the 100m backstroke title on the second night of the Absolute Insurance World Championship trials in Auckland tonight.

The North Shore pair pushed each other with both going under the qualifying mark for the Melbourne world championships in March, after the second night of finals at the West Wave Aquatic Centre, Waitakere City.

A combination of four male 200m freestyle swimmers also beat the relay team standard for the world championship to take the number of qualifiers for Melbourne to eight.

Local swimmer Mark Herring broke the first national record of the meet in winning the semifinal of the 50m freestyle, going under the previous mark held by his older brother Brad Herring.

The Auckland team of McLean, Helen Norfolk, Melissa Ingram and Alison Fitch set a new national record in winning the women’s 4x100m freestyle record.

Coster has had a difficult year with a serious shoulder injury and also having her wisdom teeth removed, which seriously affected her training.

However the former world championship finalist in butterfly returned to backstroke over the last 12 months to produce a strong performance to pip McLean, the Commonwealth Games record holder over the distance. She clocked 1:02.05, a significant personal best.

Former world record holder Zoe Baker went under the world championship qualifying mark for a second time in winning the 50m breaststroke title from fellow New Zealand representative Annabelle Carey (Aquagym).

The four men contributing to the relay time consisted of Andrew McMillan (Neptune), Michael Jack (West Auckland Aquatics), Moss Burmester and Robert Voss (both North Shore).

Commonwealth Games bronze medallist over the distance, Moss Burmester took out the 100m butterfly title from teammate Corney Swanepoel in a fierce battle but was 8/10ths of a second outside the world championship qualifying mark.

Samantha Richter (North Shore) received a special welcome to New Zealand in winning the final of the 50m butterfly only three weeks after emigrating with her family from Zimbabwe.

Melbourne Commonwealth Games representative Cameron Gibson returned from his new base in England to win the 100m backstroke title from young North Shore clubmate John Zulch.

Manawatu 16-year-old Cara Baker impressed in winning the final of the 800m freestyle in 8:51.70, which broke her own national age group record by more than six seconds from Southland’s Joyce Wiegersma.

Alison Fitch led a North Shore treble at the top of qualifiers from the semifinals of the 100m freestyle, ahead of Helen Norfolk and Calle Durham, while clubmate Glenn Snyders was fastest in the semifinals of the 50m breaststroke.