Triple gold for three girls at the second Yorkshire County Swimming Championships maintained City of Bradford's good start to new Long Course competition year.

Winning their first county titles were Katie Ford and Jemma Senczyszyn with Janine Belton returning from Loughbourgh to capture the women,s 100 free title.

Katie, a backstroke specialist, was in determined mood in the 13 years 100m backstroke final up against rival Andrea Whaling from Rotherham who Katie had never beaten.

She set a great pace down the first 50m to turn in 33.60 seconds and finished over a second ahead of Whaling in 1min 10.91sec and well inside National time for the event.

In the 200m backstroke the roles were reversed with Andrea taking the gold medal and Katie silver.

Jemma Senczyszyn, 15, landed her first county title in one of the toughest events the 400m Individual Medley, 100 metres of each stroke.

She put together a well balanced race to finish with a five-second best time of 5min 36.51sec. Jemma backed that up with second places in the 200m IM and 100m breast - both in best times - and added eighth place in the 50m free to complete a successful weekend.

Janine Belton returned from Loughborough to take part in the women's 100m free for competition practice before the World Championship trials in April and although still in heavy training destroyed the rest of the field with her best unrested time of 56.88sec, only 0.5sec outside the county record.

Bradford's only male swimmer to land a medal was Richard Shepherd in the men's 200m IM. Shepherd led from the start and by the end of the breaststroke leg had opened up a two and half second gap on Stuart Trees of Leeds. But he was closed down by Trees who finished in 2min 13.88sec with Shepherd second 0.5sec behind and Steven Broadley of Bradford fourth.

Richard also took fourth place in the men's 100m breast.

In a welcome return to competition form, Mark Gilhooly took fourth place in the 16 years 100m back with a fifth place and National time of 56.98sec in the 100m free. Double fifth places went to Omar Hussain and Gavin Moon for 1500m free, Omar in the 15 years age group and Gavin in the men's.

Tomorrow night sees the first Rising Stars gala of the year at Shipley Swimming Pool for the City's 7 to 11 year old swimmers.