On a frenetic morning at the Great Britain Olympic trials in Sheffield, during which three Commonwealth records tumbled, Mark Foster became the oldest British man to qualify for an Olympic swimming team.

After James Goddard swam 1min 57.72sec in the 200 metres medley (the fourth fastest of all-time) and Rebecca Adlington, 19, eclipsed the Commonwealth mark of Linda MacKenzie, the Australian, with victory in 4min 4.50sec (the eighth best in history) in the 400 metres freestyle, Foster stepped up to his blocks for the 50 metres freestyle final. Then he stepped down, held up a hand, tore off his bodysuit and explained to the referee that the zip had broken. After a short delay, Foster, 37, was ready to race in the leggings he was wearing underneath the troublesome suit “because I had an inkling that something might go wrong”.

Once on his blocks, Foster made no mistakes, emerging from his dive ahead of the field and maintaining his pace until the final five metres, when Simon Burnett, the national record-holder, surged forward. It was too late. Foster stopped the clock at 22.30sec, the only man under the qualifying time of 22.35, with Burnett on 22.38 and Matthew Tutty on 22.46.

Foster, the first English swimmer to qualify for five Olympics and who missed the cut for the Athens Games by 0.01sec, will be 38 when he boards the plane to Beijing with a team whose average age without him will be about 21. After three days of trials, 14 swimmers have booked Olympic tickets in individual events, and they include five teenagers who were not born when Foster raced at his first Olympic Games in 1988. Ellen Gandy is the baby of the team so far, at 16, while the overall Britain team will boast Tom Daley, 13, who became the youngest European diving champion when winning the ten-metre platform title in Eindhoven two weeks ago.

Three records inside the pace set at the Australian trials in Sydney last week is a happy measure of how big the British advance has been in Sheffield, where there have been nine national and five Commonwealth records set in less than three days.

Goddard and Liam Tancock are now the fourth and fifth fastest in history in the 200 metres medley. Goddard's 1min 57.72sec kept Tancock at bay by 0.24sec and was 0.07sec inside the standard Tancock had set in the heats. Before last year, no British man had swum inside two minutes. Now there are three, as Gregor Tait swam 1min 59sec in the heats, although he opted not to race in the final to focus on his, and Goddard's, best event, the 200 metres backstroke.

Chris Cook, 28, can also challenge for a place on the podium in Beijing after setting the third Commonwealth record of the morning. With 59.88sec, he shaved 0.14sec off the national record to become the first Briton - and eighth of all-time - to crack the one minute barrier in the 100 metres breaststroke. A relieved Cook said:

“I've had such a poor year, 18 months of not really performing, trying every way of racing that event - and that was the one I've been looking for.”

Adlington, normally an 800 metres swimmer, is new to the 400 metres freestyle but is now competitive in a second event in Beijing. Joanne Jackson took the second place for Beijing.

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