Swimming: Capp breaks records on way to Russia

Tauranga's Nathan Capp celebrates after smashing the 400m freestyle record at the New Zealand Open Swimming Championships on Wednesday night. Photo / BW Media

Tauranga's Nathan Capp provided two golden moments at the New Zealand Open Swimming Championships in Henderson on Wednesday night.

The 22-year-old from the Greerton club broke two long-standing New Zealand records in the 400m individual medley (IM) and 800m freestyle. He also qualified for the world championships in Kazan, Russia in August.

Capp was not overly confident of his chances in the 400m event after battling niggling shoulder and hip injuries over the summer. His major focus was the 1500m freestyle, where he is the national record holder in both long course and short course.

But in a stunning swim Capp clocked 4:17.72 to be 1.5 seconds under the qualifying standard and also took half a second off Dean Kent's national 400m IM record that has stood since 2006.

"I felt good tonight," Capp said. "To qualify is great but to break Dean's record is really special. I have held him in such high esteem all of my career so to have his record is incredible." But that was not the end of Capp's heroics.

He came back later on Wednesday evening to win the 800m freestyle in 7:58.30, nearly five seconds inside the previous New Zealand record set by Dylan Dunlop-Barrett. Capp became the first New Zealander to swim under eight minutes.

Earlier on Monday night Capp broke his own Bay of Plenty record by two seconds in finishing fourth in the 400m freestyle final.

And he still has his favourite 1500m freestyle race to come tonight.

Capp made headlines last year when he swam an astonishing race at the New Zealand Short Course Championships in Wellington to take a remarkable 16 seconds off double Olympic gold medallist Danyon Loader's 1500m freestyle time. Loader's record had stood for 22 years.

The last competitive race Capp had before this week's nationals was the 2.6km Sand to Surf ocean race held at Mount Maunganui last month.

Capp said after he beat Rotorua's ocean swim specialist Kane Radford to the finish line he was building his stamina up for this week's nationals.

Judging by his performances this week Capp is peaking at the right time.

The world championships in August will be the ideal forum for Capp to show those New Zealand Commonwealth selectors what they missed out on.