Snyders Europe-bound for FINA World Cup Swim Series

Leading New Zealand swimmer Glenn Snyders will take on some of the world’s best in Europe this month in the FINA/ARENA World Cup competition.

The 24 year old breaststroker will contest the three European legs of the series in Stockholm this weekend, Moscow (18-19 October) and Berlin (22-23 October).

Snyders, part of Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance Centre, was the top ranked kiwi swimmer at the recent world championships where he ranked seventh in the world this year over 50m breaststroke, sixth over 100m and 11th over 200m.

While he had a break after his prolonged campaign at the World Championships and World University Games (2 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze medals), the World Cup will provide excellent development for next year’s London Olympic campaign.

“Racing with top international competition in three meets over nine days will provide the type of hard and high quality swimming that will be invaluable,” said coach Mark Regan.
“It’s short course racing which will test his starts and turns under pressure.

“Mostly it’s just a fantastic chance to get a lot of quality racing under pressure. You can’t beat that.”

While there’s some useful prizemoney up for grabs, coach Regan said that was not the consideration for this campaign.

“Glenn has probably raced too little. The Europeans, who dominate in breaststroke, get to race so much and this will be ideal for Glenn.”

Snyders is likely to come up against Germany’s Marco Koch who won all three breaststroke events at the first round of the World Cup in Dubai at the weekend, winning the 50m in 27.51s, the 100m in 59.07s and the 200m in 2:04.97.

Snyders is the only New Zealand swimmer competing in Europe while fellow SNZ HPC and North Shore clubmate Melissa Ingram will compete in the three Asian legs of the World Cup in Singapore (November 4-5), Beijing (November 8-9) and Tokyo (November 12-13).