KEY POINTS:
Julia Toomey's individual gold and more relay heroics have left the New Zealand team in a strong position after the final day of pool competition at the world lifesaving championships in Germany.
Christchurch's Toomey captured the 100m rescue medley title in a thrilling finish from Italy's Erica Buratto, winning by just 0.1sec in one minute, 16.24 seconds.
She also anchored the New Zealand women's relay team in their bronze medal finish in the 4x25 metre manikin carry.
Otago's Andy McMillan added his second individual silver, in the 100m rescue medley, while team captain Glenn Anderson was just 0.5sec behind in winning bronze.
The pair also helped the men's 4x25m manikin carry team to silver, pipped only by a world record swim from the strong Italian team.
The 12-strong New Zealand team now head to the Baltic Sea resort of Warnemuende for the final two days of beach events, leading Italy in the overall standings but crucially with a 56-point buffer over defending champions Australia.
"The aim was to get a lead over Australia out of the pool and the bigger lead, the better," Toomey said.
"We've just been trying to get as many athletes into A finals and keep the Aussies in the B finals - that really worked well today and the team are on a high.
"We've opened up a decent lead over Australia and our beach athletes are jumping out of their skin."
Toomey's medley triumph was her first gold medal in two world championship campaigns and capped a hectic three days in the pool.
" I'm very tired after three big days but also feeling pretty fantastic.
"It was a great day for all of us and it was nice to get an individual gold at last and prove to all the other teams that we could actually do it, rather than just be relay specialists."
The men's relay team shattered the national record in the manikin carry by nearly three seconds and only the Italians' second relay world record in as many days prevented them from adding their second gold.
McMillan also dipped under the national record with his rescue medley silver, posting a time of 1min 04.03sec to finish behind Italy's Federico Pinotti who clocked 1min 03.49sec.
Anderson, who held the previous record of 1min 05.58sec, also went under that time with a 1min 04.53sec effort for bronze.
Though New Zealand only slipped ahead of Italy in the final event of the day capturing silver in the Simulated Emergency Rescue Competition, the European nations aren't expected to feature in the beach events, which start on Friday night (NZ time) after a rest day.
New Zealand's hefty lead over Australia after the pool is similar to their 1998 effort, the last time they won the world championships.
- NZPA
