British swimmers dominated day one of the Barcelona leg of the Mare Nostrum series yesterday with five golds.

Double Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington set a new championship record of eight minutes 19.86 seconds to win the 800m freestyle.

Hannah Miley triumphed in the 400m individual medley.

Georgia Davies (100m backstroke) James Goddard (200 IM) and Chris Walker-Hebborn (200m backstroke) were the other GB winners.

Adlington led from the front and built up a lead of over two seconds at the halfway stage, finishing strongly ahead of Spain’s Mireia Garcia Belmonte, the world short-course silver medallist with world open water champion Keri-Anne Payne fourth.

“I’m very pleased with that swim,” said Adlington. “To be honest I never expected to finish in that sort of time given the training I’ve been doing at this stage of the season.

“I swam here two years ago and went 8:21.00 off the same kind of preparation so to post that time is a bit of a shock.

“I haven’t backed off and am training right through which makes this kind of performance even more surprising.”

There was also a bronze for Aimee Wilmott behind Miley in the 400m individual medley while Miley won her second medal of the day with bronze in the 200m breaststroke.

Swansea’s Jaz Carlin and Jemma Lowe won bronze in the 200m freestyle and 100m butterfly respectively while there were silvers for Michael Jamieson (100m breaststroke), David Carry (400m freestyle) and Rob Pavoni (200m butterfly) and a bronze for Matt Johnson (200m butterfly).