Swimmers Aiming to Make Splash Towards London Olympics

1 April 2011, 10:58AM
Swimming NZ

London swim hopefuls take an important splash towards their Olympic goals in the State Insurance New Zealand Championships starting in Auckland on Sunday.

The six-day championship doubles as the official trial for July’s 14th FINA World Championships in Shanghai, which will be a crucial platform towards the Olympic campaign.

Swimmers at the trials will need to attain the tough FINA qualifying times only in finals at the West Wave Aquatic Centre.

Swimming New Zealand Performance Director, Jan Cameron said that these trials form a key to potential success in the London Olympics.

“The actual qualification process for London will be our Trials next year,” Cameron said. “But those swimmers who have the capability of making semifinals, finals and podium need to be showing indications they are on track at this year’s world championships.

“Once you move into the top level of international swimming, then athletes can only make small incremental improvements year by year. That makes the Shanghai world championships very important as the springboard for swimmers to push on for London.

“It’s a litmus test of their progress and how they sit among the best swimmers from around the globe in their events.”

Cameron expects the charge to be led by the nucleus of the successful Delhi Commonwealth Games team that earned six medals.

“We qualified nine swimmers for the last world championships in 2009 and we have 11 swimmers in action who qualified for the Commonwealth Games who we will be looking to lead the way.”

They were Daniel Bell (North Shore – SNZ High Performance Centre), Lauren Boyle (North Shore HPC), Amaka Gessler (Motueka HPC), Natasha Hind (Capital HPC), Melissa Ingram (North Shore HPC), Gareth Kean (Capital), Hayley Palmer (North Shore), Penny Marshall (North Shore HPC), Glenn Snyders (North Shore HPC), Emily Thomas (North Shore HPC) and Natalie Wiegersma (Waverley).

Several of these swimmers have already bettered the qualifying standards for Shanghai in the past 12 months, a number of them at Delhi, although it is more daunting task under pressure in the final.

“It is Swimming New Zealand policy that at the Trials our swimmers need to demonstrate that they can deliver under pressure in preparation for performing under pressure at pinnacle events.”

However strong performances across the board will give opportunity to qualify relay teams, including the Commonwealth Games medal events of the women’s 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle, while there’s hope for a men’s medley combination.

There will be interest in the form of several swimmers returning from their bases overseas. These include USA-based Boyle, currently completing her degree at the University of Southern California, and Palmer, who is training under leading coach Randy Reese in Florida, and Nick Ferrif, who comes off the back of the NCAA Championship for the University of California.

The 2009 world championship representative Andrew McMillan (North Shore) has returned from a training stint in Australia, along with Queensland-based Cara Baker, who has already qualified for Shanghai in open water competition.

The championships run from Sunday until next Friday with heats from 10am and finals from 6pm, with a special skins and relay meet next Saturday at West Wave Aquatic Centre.

The Swimming New Zealand AquaBlacks team for the World Championships and teams for the Youth Commonwealth Games and World University Games will be announced following the competition.

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