Emma James, a swimmer with the potential to be national standard, made a successful comeback in the Sussex Champion-ships at Crawley.

The Brighton youngster beat the pain barrier to finish a surprise fourth in the girls' born 1991 100m breaststroke behind winning clubmate Hannah Belameh, just five months after an operation to shorten her right leg.

Emma, 11, was hailed as an inspiration and tipped for stardom.

Brian Smith, a Brighton assistant coach and gala secretary, said: "Emma is a brave little girl. Her effort will motivate others who have had difficulties and I am convinced she has the talent and physical attributes to make national standard. Claire Manton is the club's star girl swimmer and has won national titles. There is no reason why Emma can't follow her.

"Before her operation she was doing times on a par with Hannah, who is in the top five nationally for her age group.

"Emma indicated she can get back to that form with that swim. She might not have won but to get fourth in the circumstances was a fantastic effort. She has tremendous potential in all strokes and can achieve whatever she wants to."

Her father Nick, mum Julie and brothers Connor, who competed, and Charlie roared her on.

Julie said: "I was in tears and Nick was shouting himself hoarse. It was very emotional for us because we knew just what Emma has gone through just to be there. We were shocked she did so well.

"Emma was only allowed to dive last month and her swimming has been limited to just one session a week which only recently went up to two. You could see at the meet that she struggled to dive because she is in a bit of pain."

Emma had her operation on September 18 at the Great Ormond Children's Hospital in London.

Julie said: "She had a tilted pelvis. We were advised to have it straightened as the difference in length of her legs, about four centimetres, would put pressure on the spine and give her problems later in life. She was in plaster for five weeks and still needs exercise to get her bones right."

Emma, who helped raise funds for Great Ormond at her St Martin's School this week, added: "I pleased with how I swam. I would like to do as well as Claire and hopefully this can be a good start for me to do that. I'd like to win loads of trophies."

Her clubmates dominated the girls events.

The Brighton team of Holly White, Claire Manton, Amy Kent and Kirsty Hedge, retained the 4x50m freestyle by smashing their county and championship record time by two seconds in 1min.52.65sec.

The club's girls had a series of butterfly victories with Kirsty Hedge (born 1986 race), Manton (1987) and White (88) all winning at 100m. Laura West and Jade Tate were third and fourth behind White and Sally Udeen was sixth in Manton's wake.

White, 13, got within 0.59sec of women's 200m butterfly winner Alexa White from Crawley, a national senior swimmer who also retained the women's 50m freestyle title.

Bognor ace Gemma Spofforth completed a second successive double, relegating Manton to second place in the 100m women's and girls' backstroke while breaking championship records.

Jack Smith (Brighton) caused an upset in the boys' event by beating multi-county champion Philip Durrant (Haywards Heath) in the boys' born 1988 100m breaststroke.

His father Brian said: "That was a bit of a surprise but Jack has had a good start to the year."

Trevor Gaunt (Hastings) claimed the men's 50m and 100m backstroke titles and the boys' born 1984 and 1985 200m individual medley. Meanwhile, Ben Hutchinson (Crawley) retained the boys' 50m backstroke and won the 100m event. Clubmate Adam Jones secured the born 1989 100m breaststroke.

Chris Kukla (St Bede's, Upper) chipped in with triumphs in the men's and boys' 400m freestyle.

East Grinstead enjoyed three boys' age groups victories through Samuel Wright (1992 50m breaststroke), Richard Thorne (1992 100m butterfly) and 4x25m freestyle junior time trial (1991 or 1992).