Swimming: Simmonds and Spofforth reverse medal fortunes

After grabbing gold in the 200m backstroke ahead of Spofforth on Tuesday, Simmonds was ground down by the world champion's power in Budapest.

Simmonds turned ahead of Spofforth, but behind Germany's Daniela Samulski, at the 50m mark before the Portsmouth swimmer found a higher gear in the second half of the race to win in a time of 59.80seconds.

Nineteen-year-old Simmonds says that the duo have sent a resounding message to the rest of the world after their backstroke masterclass in Hungary.

She said: "It is fantastic to be coming away with one and two for GB because that is what we came here to do and we are delighted to do it.

"We want to take Europe by storm on the backstroke and that is what we have done so it is fantastic to be coming out with a result like that."

Simmonds will have a day's rest before she gets back in the water with a real prospect of making it a hat-trick of medals in the 100m medley relay.

But despite her delight at grabbing a second medal, Simmonds admitted her frustration at the technical part of the race.

She maintains she was not distracted by Spofforth's progress in the adjacent lane, but admitted the atmosphere of the sellout event affected her.

She said: "I was a little disappointed with the technical side of that race. I missed my turn a little bit and I think I just got lost in the emotions a little bit.

"I think you can kind of tell where people are but you have a couple of walls of splash on either side of you because of your arms. You just have to swim your own race really and you can't concentrate on what someone else is doing."

Olympic bronze medallist Jo Jackson, of Northallerton, anchored the British 4x200m freestyle team to bronze but conceded the quartet were disappointed it was not gold.

The team of double Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington, Jaz Carlin, 400m medley gold medallist Hannah Miley and Jackson were the favourites to top the podium in Budapest.

But things did not go to plan as a below-par swim from Adlington, who had finished seventh in the 800m individual freestyle earlier in the session, saw Carlin take over with the GB quartet way off the pace in sixth.

Carlin, followed by Miley, put GB back in contention before Jackson – who produced the second fastest split in the team – ensured the quartet did not come away empty handed as she touched home in an overall time of 7:58.13mins.

Hungary were the surprise gold medallists ahead of France and Jackson, who was part of the quartet that won 4x100m silver on Monday, said: "We are disappointed not to win but it is a team effort and we are in it together.

"We know we can go quicker but we are all in heavy training and we have got a medal so we should be happy and we know there are a lot of good swims in us in the future."

Britain's medal tally was lifted to 12 yesterday with Liam Tancock second in the 50m backstroke and Miley adding the 200m individual medley bronze medal to her 400m title.

However, Adlington's seventh place in the 800m freestyle, more than four seconds behind the winner, world champion Lotte Friis, was a huge disappointment.

Her time of 8:27.48 was more than six seconds slower than her best of the season which still heads the 2010 world rankings.

She said: "I did think I'd go quicker than that, but I did 55km last week and I'm still in hard training. I'm so disappointed, you train so hard. I hope to do a bit better in the sprint events.

"It's so hard on the distance work when you are not rested, you are just so sluggish because you need that extra bit there for distance."

n The nation's leading energy supplier British Gas is the Principal Partner of British Swimming, and have pledged 15m to support the sport at all levels – from paddling pool to podium. For more information visit www.britishgas.co.uk/swimming.